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

I am pleased that it turned out at all-that I finished it. I guess it fell short of my original goal, which was to write something great, on the order of "The Death of Ivan Illych." But then, my mistake was getting born without the brains of Tolstoy.

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

I began writing the essay out of an inner compulsion to think on the page about my father, who was very frail and whom I suspected would die soon. (In fact he did, a few months after I completed it.) In a sense, I was trying to mourn in advance, ahead of his actual dying. I wrote it out almost as in a dream, quickly and without much alteration, then revised it for several months-little things. I guess the hardest thing technically was to take this largely reserved, passive individual and try to render his life dramatically on the page.

If you write in other genres (poetry, fiction, playwriting, literary criticism, etc.) how does your experience writing in creative nonfiction depend upon or depart from your other kinds of writing?

It doesn't, really. Especially in a piece like this. It was like writing a novella.

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?

I think creative nonfiction is becoming a more and more attractive option to young writers. But the masters of the form, and the ones who bother to learn and understand its tradition (often one and the same) will still be rare.

What are the specific literary techniques you attempt to use as a creative nonfiction writer? For example, do you attempt to write in scenes? Do you employ dialogue? Specificity of detail? How and why?

I use them all.

What advice might you offer young people interested in writing?

Put in a million hours and 30 years and you'll get somewhere, guaranteed!