Naming is nice. It took me days before I was able to speak a name for my first child (what if people did not like it?), and I suspect we gave her a secret, second name as well, to keep her safe.

I do not think we remember our family in any real sense. We live in them instead

If you try to control it too much, the book is dead. You have to let it fall apart quite early on and let it start doing its own thing. And that takes nerve, not to panic that the book you were going to write is not the book you will have at the end of the day.

If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.

Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.

I am interested in levels of brain discourse. How articulate are the voices in your head? You know, there's a different voice for the phone, and a different voice if you're talking in bed. When you're starting off with a narrator, it's interesting to think, where is their voice coming from, what part of their brain?

I do not believe in evil- I believe that we are human and fallible, that we things and spoil them in an ordinary way.