Loren Kleinman interviewed me for the Huffington Post where she grilled me on everything from Civil Coping Mechanisms to the definition of Alt Lit. Here’s a snippet from the interview:
LK: How do you cope with rejection? How do you cope with resistance, meaning, how do you cope with doubt when writing?
MJS: It never gets any easier. It’s always there to fuck with your mood and maybe your day. I’m the guy that rereads a rejection 12 times, begins to cultivate some totally fictional hate-spun story about the reason for being rejected to make myself feel better. But I’ve gotten better at it lately. For the most part, I take the constant rejection in stride and figure that I’m going to keep trying no matter what so it doesn’t really matter. That’s what’s most important, I believe: Fight, retool, explore. Doubt is always there and it could easily be the death of your creative self. Don’t let it. Just keep going. Fight it by not backing down.
