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Why am I telling this story? I am, as I've said, a minor character, out of place in this narrative, but the major characters of all these stories from the first ten years of the epidemic have left. The men I wanted to follow into the future are dead. Finding them had made me want to live, and I did…

Narrative writing sets down details in an order that evokes the writer's experience for the reader, she announced. This seemed obvious but also radical - no one had ever said it so plainly to us. She spoke often of "the job." If you're doing your job, the reader feels what you felt. You don't have …

And this, of course, is why you should never read for yourself. You can't give yourself the impersonal reading you need. [...] to succeed, it requires an ability to be coldly impersonal about yourself and your state, so as not to cloud what is there with what you want to see. I think few of us know…

And this, of course, is why you should never read for yourself. You can't give yourself the impersonal reading you need. [...] to succeed, it requires an ability to be coldly impersonal about yourself and your state, so as not to cloud what is there with what you want to see. I think few of us know…

[...] There was something I wanted to feel, and I felt it only when I was writing. I think of this as one of the most important parts of my writer's education---that when left alone with nothing else to read, I began to tell myself the stories I wanted to read.