What pleases you about the way your essay turned out? Are there any ways in which you feel it fell short of your original goal?

What pleases me most about the final version of "A Conversation with Diane Ackerman" is my own clearer understanding of how profiles work. Everything is there for a reason; every part contributes to the whole. What fell short of my original goal is the interview material that I had to work with. I didn't have much experience with interviewing and had one forty-five minute meeting with her. Although I'd prepared by reading all of her work, the reviews of that work, and nearly all of her past interviews, I'm sure that with more experience I could have had a better instinct as to what questions might have been new to her and elicited the most interesting responses.

How did your essay develop, both in your initial thinking about it and in the revision process? What happened in the writing of it that you didn't expect would happen?

I'd been a fan of the poetic quality of Ackerman's prose and also the blurred boundaries in her work between immersion journalism and the personal essay. I saw her work succeeding as a product of her own invention. So I came to the interview as an admirer more than as one writing a profile, which was also the first tension I had to work through in revision. It was difficult to stop talking about how wonderful I found her work and to begin to talk about her writing and the interview more objectively. Consequently it took a long time before I came to trust my own authority and have control of the profile. As an essayist, I'm used to feeling that the content and structure are largely my own, but with a profile I had to collaborate with Ackerman's responses and my editor's guidance, outside concerns that I had to negotiate my writing around and share ownership with. Finally, I had to integrate that input and decide what the profile was really saying. This is the first profile I've written, so everything was a surprise - how the interview dynamic works, the bridge between a fan and an authority, the deliberateness of detail and sequence. More than anything, the difficulty surprised me. I'd done research for a few months before the interview and have revised six times, spanning more than a year from start to finish.

How does your experience writing in creative nonfiction depend upon or depart from your work in other genres (poetry, fiction, playwriting, literary criticism)?

I've been writing and reading poetry for much longer than I have nonfiction, but as I write more of each it's easier to see the connections between the two. Poetry is what first taught me about the sounds and precision of language and the power of detail. It's also the genre in which I learned to write about myself, more or less, for the first time. Reading poetry also demands a kind of active investment that I hope for from readers and that has helped me to understand the subtleties of nonfiction. Writing nonfiction has taught me how to work with structure, focus, and memory. The concerns of one genre have attached themselves to the other and, I hope, broadened my abilities in both. In nonfiction, I've learned the luxury of room to develop the writing and, in poetry, I've learned to appreciate the immunity from fact/fiction distinctions and responsibilities.

Speculate about creative nonfiction as an emerging genre in American literature.Where do you see it going in the next several years, or even farther down the line?

Because nonfiction runs on such a long continuum, from tabloid to memoir, and is accessible in so many forms, I think that the literary genre of creative nonfiction is still trying to define its place in American literature. But I also see the space this genre holds growing in the academy, in bookstores, in literary journals. Its responsibility to be nonfiction gives it the space for personal and historical testimony while the creative aspect allows the writer (and reader) to work with one's craft the same way a novelist or poet does. I believe that creative nonfiction's esteem in our literature will swell in the future and prove its necessity.

What are the specific literary techniques you attempt to use as a creative nonfiction writer? Scenes? Dialogue? Specific detail, etc.?

This profile does not represent the kind of writing I usually do, which is the personal essay. Coming to the essay from poetry, I still think very much about the language and the details before anything else. In the writing that I do, I try to look with a lot of scrutiny at the small, ordinary moments within the scene, rather than placing too much emphasis on the drama or movement of a scene. I rely on the content of my essays to determine how I use which literary techniques, but my work is pretty quiet. By that I mean that it's more of an examination or interrogation of the everyday than a story beyond the realm of most readers. Because of that, I rely on detail and language much more than scenes and dialogue.

What advice do you offer young people interested in writing?

To an apprentice writer I would suggest reading as constantly and widely as possible. I would also suggest pushing yourself into other genres, even if you feel less comfortable in them - elements of one genre can lend a lot of distinction to another, can give the writer's craft many more possibilities. Finally, I think it's important to listen and watch all that is around you closely. There are stories in everything.