The Write Start: "I was 28 and had been set on being a writer since the age of 15. I had gone about it as methodically as somebody might become a dentist. I chose my college on the basis of the writer I most wanted to study with. I majored in the English honors program because it required me to study the entire literary tradition. I also took as many creative-writing courses as I could. I was monomaniacal about being a writer. But my monomania was dull. It consisted mainly of training myself to sit for long periods alone in a room."