Sometimes it's interesting to see what people who have too much control need to do to write freely.

Teaching is very important to me, and it has become more important as I get older.

You may be somebody who writes best for a small press that doesn't pay very well, but you might have a fascinating and intricate style that might not appeal to as many readers but will be incredibly meaningful to the readers you have. Truly, that's as wonderful if not more wonderful.

You have to write fiction that mirrors the actual world, which has people of all sorts in it.

Inevitably we start by thinking that if our work is any good, we'll get money. It's as we would if you started up a business or if you work in another profession.

I'm very secretive. I'll write a whole novel and revise it, which might take me two years or more, and the people I know best don't know what I'm writing about.

I think that inevitably, the trouble our characters go through is a kind of metaphor for what's happening in ourselves.