Effie asked Ben Marcus:

How do you convince yourself that what you experience is good enough to be wrestled down into words? Your characters in Leaving the Sea seem like they would have a problem with saying "listen to me." How do you respond to the polar demands of writing: to keep humbly honest (laughing with everything like Saunders), and stay fearlessly self-important (laughing at everything like Joyce)? What happens to your boast/doubt?

Ben Marcus My doubt grows and gets fat every day. It is a near constant. Only when I'm actually typing does it subside for a bit. But your first question: how do I convince myself that my experience is good enough to be written about. Honestly I don't want to write too directly from my experience. I want the writing to be a new experience, some concoction that creates something new, using old and dull pieces of me. I'm not a big fan of writing too directly about stuff that's happened to me, but writing makes it into a new thing anyway, so this is something that doesn't worry me so much.

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