George Saunders

That's what I said.

That's what I said.

I said, actually your anxiety, let's just not call it that.

Let's turn a little bit and call it beautiful high standards.

Can you think of it that way?

You know, and she'll go, oh, maybe.

I say, yeah, because you're anxious because you love this form so much you don't want to mess it up.

That's good, you know?

So anyway, that whole process of taking anger and going, yeah, of course I'm pissed off, you know?

And in my work, that's exactly what I'm doing.

I think I'm taking...

darkness and neurosis and OCD and anger and all that stuff.

And then putting it on the page and trying to work with it.

Yeah.

I agree.

I think it was, I don't remember who said it, but maybe Tina Fey has said that you could say I'm nervous or you could say I'm excited and they're similar.

So the writers I work with at Syracuse, you can't truncate them.

You can't say don't be what you are.

But you can say, can we together reconceptualize that thing that you're naming in a negative way?

Just turn it slightly and see if it's not a virtue, because it has to be.