Brendan O'Connor will be reading at The Difficult to Name Happy Anniversary Reading Spectacular on Sat. April 25 at Brit Pack.
You're a very kind, pleasant, funny, welcoming person. Great on Twitter.com. Mysterious. Do you think this is a fair assessment? Do people who spend a lot of time with you also find you mysterious? You can get a quote from a good friend as a way of answering, if you want.
Lol, come on man.
Two-part question: What's a piece that you've wanted to write for a while but maybe can't quite find the right angle? Also, what's a piece that you wrote that came to you very easily?
There's a story that I want to write, but it's in Spain and I don't speak Spanish and I can't get any of the subjects to respond to my emails. So that's a drag.
It's hard to think of a piece that came "very easily." I can think of plenty that were difficult! But even with stuff that wasn't painful to produce there's always something that requires extra effort, whether it's in the reporting or the writing or the revision. (Usually it's with the reporting or the revising. In my experience, if you do good reporting the writing shouldn't be hard, but revision is always tricky.) But all my editors are such a pleasure to work with that the problem—whatever it is—is always a gratifying puzzle to solve, rather than a horrible obstacle to overcome. (Almost always, anyway.)
What can people expect from your reading/performance?