I was trying to make a novel about something no one wanted to read about into something they couldn't put down or look away from.

Most written work is a conversation between the editor and the writer, that the writer essentially fulfills in public, and the editor provides the stage for that to happen as well as the prompts.

I grew up treating a life as a writer as a career in letters, one devoted to many kinds of writing. And so it seemed normal to study both fiction writing and the literary essay as an undergrad.

Writers aren't born, they're made - from practice, reading, and a lot of caffeine.

The ideal editor will hold you to the best of yourself in the piece.

It's my experience that people don't think of fiction writing as being as intellectually serious as other kinds of writing in academia and so without a career as a critic or essayist you can be treated as something of a spiritual medium - a fraud - for "just" writing fiction.

The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.