George Saunders

No, we met actually at the MFA program in Syracuse.

She's a really wonderful writer.

Right.

So that period where we – I'm guessing it's around 1988 and we had two adorable daughters at home and no money.

And I think we both felt like, oh, so this life that we imagined for ourselves of being high-powered writers traveling around the world at ease, that's not going to happen because now we're really into the fight here.

We just bought a little house and we're just scrambling.

Every paycheck was a scramble.

And so that was, I mean, it was tough in some ways, but it was also so beautiful, you know, to have all those kind of, I don't know, like as a younger person, I'm very ambitious and was really feeling my lack of accomplishment.

You know, I was, why am I, why are people pulling away from me?

Why are they getting it and I'm not getting it?

Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

Maybe there's something wrong with me.

Or at that point even I just hadn't written a story that I liked for a long time, you know.

And I thought, oh, that's weird, you know.

And for a young artist, you know, to have a period where you're not in touch with your essentialness is really painful.

You know, like you write something anybody could write that.

Where's my specialness or where's my, you know.

So that was rough.

But then the kind of upside was I just couldn't worry about that at that point.

You know, we were really scrambling.