We have to give our poor, innocent, and undeserving-of-our-badness characters trouble in order to make them characters in a story.

For some people, it's very easy to be spontaneous and they can pour out the most wonderful stuff. But it's really hard to exert control over it, to think, 'Well, this could be different. This could go in the opposite order, there could be more here and less there.' For other people, it's much easier to have rules and a methodology, but much harder to let loose and allow their feelings to come pouring out on the page. They're more shy or they're just more distant from their emotions. I think everybody starts with one or the other.

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

I think the difference between writing as someone and writing for them is that when you write for someone, you take on a kind of political burden or message, which I don't think we have the right to do.

Sometimes indirect style and varying chronology is great, but quite often I've seen it be just something that gets in the way. It turns out when I talk to the writer that she or he, and more often it's a woman, that she's worried.

Being part of a community of writers is huge. I really think that's why people go to MFA programs.

When an editor first explained to me the difference between direct and indirect writing, I just thought it was a stylistic choice.