“Here’s what I believe: The perfect writing you might do lies already waiting for you like a sculpture inside. Your job is to subtract: Subtract the ego, the chorus of censors and self-numbing devices, the greater question of the indulgence of art or any distraction that fuzzes intention. Your flavor is your subjectivity, your take on the mysterious world we live in, and if you contribute it without overlay, you perform a service to others who seek an articulated world. Be someone upon whom nothing is lost indeed. If you have a certain threshold of calling and skill—a love of literature and its redemptive powers, a fluency with words—the subtractive sculpture you create offers refuge for others. One trick I like to use to get to the sculpture by the back door is to use aleatory cues when I’m writing, letting chance work as a Rohrshach: a café waiter’s delighted gesture, a random line of poetry, a photography book opened on a bent page. In this way, chance becomes destiny becomes your intention, honed to do its part in some bigger tarantella, the mystery of chance as you are there, winded or not, offering it up to your readers.”
—Edie Meidav, author of Lola, California (forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, July 2011)