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

Anyone with an imagination can write about the day-to-day experiences of someone he or she is not.

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

You can't tell a writer they should just be more confident.

This is true in other fields, too, that a legal aid lawyer gets a whole lot less money than a Hollywood lawyer who handles the estates of celebrities. Maybe the legal aid lawyer is doing something better, though, and maybe they're happier. It's not a completely unheard of idea, but I do think we have to remind ourselves at times to look for satisfaction in other ways.

I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.

We have to diversify, we have to find work we can do that helps other people while helping ourselves, work that has to do with writing that isn't necessarily just writing saleable novels or getting huge advances.