Stewart O'Nan
Stewart O'Nan
Stewart O'Nanis an American novelist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth4 February 1961
CountryUnited States of America
next
If there is an audience out there for me, I want them to be surprised when the next book comes out.
hoping writer
I always squirm when I read what's called 'creative nonfiction,' and the writer is lobbing gobs of emotion and language at the world, hoping some of it will stick.
apollo early flight growing rockets travel
Growing up in the '60s and early '70s, with the space flight and the Apollo program, I always loved planes. I always loved rockets and I always loved space travel.
neat needs ragged
The story is always in service to the characters, and is only as long or short, or neat or ragged as it needs to be.
favorite imagination offered peculiar points
As a fiction writer, my favorite tools are my imagination and the peculiar opportunities offered by different points of view.
since writers
I'm not sure the risks I take are any different from what other writers take, since we all serve at the pleasure of the reader.
secret plot juicy
The spirit of Jane Eyre looms over Once Upon a Day. Lisa Tucker keeps the plot of this gothic novel bubbling with tons of juicy family secrets.
promise legends facts
All stories teach us something, and promise us something, whether they're true or invented, legend or fact.
fun writing thinking
Saul Bellow once said, 'A writer is a reader who has moved to emulation' — which I think is true. I just started writing and made that jump from reader to writer and learned how hard it was, but also how much fun it was — losing myself in these imaginary worlds.
acceptance romance alive
The sins of the Midwest: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of the familiar. Where is the romance in being buried alive? In growing old?
love tests tests-of-love
The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love?
heart might way
To be lost and forgotten-to be abandoned-is a shared and terrible fear, just as our fondest hope, as we grow older, is that we might leave some parts of us behind in the hearts of those we love and in that way live on.
character eye world
Getting inside your character's head and letting the reader see the world through not just their eyes but their sensibility creates an intimacy that can't be duplicated in any other medium.
determination opportunity dull
It is not brilliance or facility that is necessary, but the determination to bear and even enjoy the dull process of wading into one's own bad prose again, and one more time, and then once again, with the utmost concentration and taste, looking for opportunities to mine deeper.