Aimee Bender
Aimee Bender
Aimee Benderis an American novelist and short story writer, known for her surreal plots and characters...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth28 June 1969
CountryUnited States of America
computer earlier failed fiction front good honest hours humbling keeps knowing teaching
I think teaching keeps me honest because if I'm up in front of a class talking about what I think is important about fiction while knowing I myself have just failed to do that hours earlier at my computer - it's a good and humbling reminder.
feel-good body language
When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It's nourishing; it's rejuvenating.
connected good people solid
I really like feeling connected to people and feeling like I have a good, solid sense of empathy.
figured good
As a kid, I often figured it was good to be patient to a fault.
creative experience felt focusing good liked obligated programs seem totally voice writers
Some creative writing programs seem evil, but my experience at Irvine was totally the opposite, where I feel like they were really good at focusing in on each writers voice and setting. When I felt like I was obligated to write a story that was more typical, no one really liked it.
finding good information invented respond stop strict structure
I write on a very strict 2-hour-a-day schedule, and I really respond to structure and invented rules. So even if I'm finding out good information on a character, I will stop when I'm set to stop.
balancing novels pages stressful
Novels are so much unrulier and more stressful to write. A short story can last two pages and then it's over, and that's kind of a relief. I really like balancing the two.
act experience interested myopic trying
I get a little myopic in the act of doing any writing. I think I'm not as interested or not as able to write about balance, because I think there's something I want to try to get at. I'm trying to get at something about the experience of growing up or about families.
ability cool describe experience figure human interested metaphor mine move tend
I don't eschew autobiographical writing, but I'm not interested in mine to be so straightforward. The things that tend to move me the most are often those that I have to figure out its meaning for myself. The human being's ability to make a metaphor to describe a human experience is just really cool.
artifice half maybe move plays
I did plays in college, and I have half of a play. But I'm kind of stuck. I keep revisiting it so maybe it will move somewhere. There's something about plays where you can feel that sense of artifice at any moment.
classics developed discover high school stick
I developed a prejudice in high school that it was all going to be boring. That kind of teenage, why-do-I-have-to-read-these-goddamn-classics feeling. And then you discover that the classics are classics because they're lively. They don't stick around because they're boring. If they're boring, they go away.
consequences magical pleasures
For me, even in my first book, the pleasures of writing anything magical is that it has to be physical. It has to be grounded and very much in this world. Then, I get to play with all the consequences of this new thing.
mom daughter brother
Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.
daughter father language
It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.