It's psychologically a weird experience to be so aware of the fact that the real time of your life is moving much faster than the fictional time you're trying to depict. You start to feel very weighted down sometimes.

If you're changing diapers and going to the playground, any ambitions of being a cool guy have to fly out the window.

In terms of e-books, though, I haven't quite gotten to the bottom of it yet, but for some reason everybody I know seems to want to engage me on that topic, or convert me. I think there are a lot of people who just want to hear me embrace e-books or finally say, 'OK, I bought an iPad and it's awesome!" There are a lot of people who would get a kick out of it, that's for sure.

For a stretch of time, I got really caught up in the idea that what people liked about my work was that I was a young guy who was trying to be cool by writing about young people and a certain kind of Bay Area culture that I was tangentially a part of.

For me, as much about being a parent as it is about being a child.

When people see me struggling on paper, I think it invites an almost collaborative relationship with the outside world, and that includes readers and other artists.

There were certainly some people who wanted me to do a feel-good story that affirmed a lot of very commonly held beliefs.