Jayne Anne Phillips
Jayne Anne Phillips
Jayne Anne Phillips is an American novelist and short story writer, born in the small town of Buckhannon, West Virginia...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
CountryUnited States of America
adult bind both business divided divorced kids though
That whole business of having two homes, and that divided loyalty bind that kids get into. I mean, my parents were divorced - though I was adult - but I still grappled with being responsible to both of them.
theory
It's my theory that many writers were the confidantes of one or the other parent. I was my mother's confidante; she had been her mother's confidante.
guild member subversive
I tell my students that being a writer is like being a member of a medieval guild and that what we are doing is very subversive and very important.
suggested
Character and story are suggested by the voice in the words themselves.
carefully paragraph
I don't do much rewriting, because each paragraph is very carefully put together.
work
I see my work as a continuum, moving from book to book.
builds image inside maybe periods tension time via work
I work via the high-tension-wire method, which is maybe going for long periods without writing while the tension builds up - when am I going to write this, am I going to be able to write this, what is this image about - and I'm thinking about it all the time, but I'm not really inside it, inside the writing.
trying
Divinity. That's what I'm trying to get at, in everything I write.
book books children valued war women
Books about women and children are not valued in the same way as a book about war. And why is that? I don't know.
larger provides writers
Writing provides no guarantees. And writers who stay with writing do it for reasons that are larger than self.
towns hometown grows
Towns change; they grow or diminish, but hometowns remain as we left them.
writing weight lines
I write line by line, by the sound and the weight and the music of the words.
writing wish more-time
I wish I had more time to write.
sight silence listening
As before, there is a great silence, with no end in sight. The writer surrenders, listening.