More Love Lives
I am interested in how characters handle their limitations, especially those who glimpse unprecedented possibility. Anticipation, fear, anxiety, and gladsomeness merge at the thought of greener pastures, as seen through a knothole.
I don’t have messages. I avoid issues, themes, and symbols. Those may be there, but they wouldn’t be without the furniture and clothing of the story itself. More important to me is the sound of the language and the details. I am trying to get at what something is like—what it feels like, not what it means. Style and story should match, the dancer and the dance inseparable. A story is not reducible. Fiction is, above all, stories, not guidebooks or the ornamental takeaways of symbol and theme. Sometimes hearing a fly buzz means there is a fly in the room. And you need a fly swatter.
—BAM