Molly Antopol
Molly Antopol
Molly Antopol is an American fiction and nonfiction writer...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
action easy found lying naturally setting
I'd be lying if I said that any part of writing is easy for me, but I have always found that setting comes more naturally to me than, say, writing action scenes.
author characters dropped love loves situations stories takes
The stories I love the most are where the author has a lot of empathy for everyone. The author loves their characters and takes their situations really seriously, and you feel like you're just dropped into a different world.
authors began cherish henry learned people prize search since stories trying whose work year
I've been religiously reading the O. Henry Prize anthologies every year since college, when I first began trying to write stories. Many of the authors whose work I cherish the most were people I first learned about through The O. Henry Prize Stories - and then I'd go search for their books.
believed create exact expert fiction formed history job learn politics reader replica responsibility step
I've never believed it's a fiction writer's job to create an exact replica of the past, a diorama the reader can step right into. But it is my responsibility to learn everything of the world I'm writing about, to become an expert in the politics and history that formed my characters' identities.
certain felt inspiring needed novel stories writers
I've always loved short stories. Even before I was a writer, I was reading short stories - there were certain writers where I just felt like they could do in a short story what so many writers needed a whole novel to do, and that was really inspiring to me.
address experience imagine jewish life themes
I can't imagine writing something that didn't address Jewish themes and questions. It's such a big part of my life, a lot of the way in which I experience the world.
family hearing liked
I come from a big family of storytellers and, growing up, I liked hearing about the years before I was born.
certain exploring fiction life main people reasons truths understand
One of the main reasons I write fiction is to try to understand what life is like for people other than myself, to try to see the world through my characters' eyes. I often find that I'm able to understand certain emotional truths about my own life by exploring things from different vantages.
admire dead endings idle longer moments pacing stories surprising time work writers
One of the things I admire about longer stories is the way writers can work with dead time and slower, more idle moments - not only can they feel expansive, they feel lived-in; the unhurried pacing often makes the endings even more resonant and surprising for me.
anxieties helped interviews seeking writers
One thing that's always helped quell my writerly anxieties is seeking out interviews with writers I admire.
books characters dusty emotional historical informed looking love places political reading sitting time truths whatever
I love being in the archives, traveling, sitting in dusty places and looking at books with brittle pages. I love reading biographies and researching, to make myself informed about whatever political or historical time I'm writing about. From there, a lot of the emotional truths about my characters emerge.
funny responding responses situation social takes whatever year
When I'm writing a story, which takes me a year or more, I can feel my character living with me - they're responding to whatever funny, familial, or social situation I'm in, and I think about their responses constantly.
constantly eight feels fifteen method months narrator react tangled twelve whatever
Writing a story is pretty all-consuming for me - it feels a lot like method acting, and for the eight or twelve or fifteen months that I'm working on a story, I'm constantly thinking about how my narrator would react to whatever tangled situation I'm in.
cast fresh gratifying immensely lens period piece throw time whatever
I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.