Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offillis an American novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
CountryUnited States of America
cross distilled domestic interested life novel slightly streak
I have a slightly contrarian streak as a writer, and one of the things I was interested in was how distilled could I make a life, and how I could cross what is kind of trivialized as a domestic novel with a novel of ideas, a philosophical novel.
art danger hole house life naturally
Always the danger for me in life and in art is not to be brave. I am not a naturally brave person. I have to will myself not to hole up in my house and read my life away.
life perhaps scream timid
I can be bolder on the page, as a character. I can gnash my teeth, I can scream and yell, in a way that I'm perhaps too timid to do in real life.
inhabit writer
I think part of what I like about being a fiction writer is that I can inhabit something that's beyond the limits of my own personality.
catch certain classic kept linear maybe note novel parts point seemed worked written wrote
I had written a novel that was more of a classic linear novel, and I worked on it and worked on it for years, and it always seemed like it wouldn't catch fire. At a certain point I just scrapped it all, and I kept maybe 15 percent of it, and I wrote those parts out on note cards.
felt rushes
I felt like I could write about quiet, self-contained moments and also about those moments when the world rushes in again.
writer
What I try to capture as a writer is the feeling of being alive, of being awake.
books call chance collect facts flip library operation outdated quotes reference strike time
Oh, I collect facts and quotes when I can't write, and I can't write most of the time. I do a little chance operation sometimes where I flip through outdated reference books to see if anything will strike me as beautiful or momentous. Library roulette, I call it.
bit center extreme gives lens opposed
I think that when we're looking at things when we're right in the center of things, as opposed to being a bit unmoored from what's going on around us, we see things through a kind of dulling lens of convention, and there's something about extreme emotional experiences that gives us a heightened clarity, I think, of thought and of feeling.
bull candy dawn fall great habits laid matter midnight reasonable stores sure work
I like to write from midnight to dawn with great stores of candy and Red Bull laid in... I'm not sure why I have the work habits of a 20-year-old coder, but no matter how many times I set up a more reasonable schedule, I always fall back to this.
mother father said
When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.
years self birth
Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friends call it.
years kind desks
For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness.
ambition looks coats
Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.