What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, 'Write what you know.' It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.

And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

I rarely use the internet for research, as I find the process cumbersome and detestable. The information gained is often untrustworthy and couched in execrable prose. It is unpleasant to sit in front of a twitching screen suffering assault by virus, power outage, sluggish searches, system crashes and the lack of direct human discourse.

It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, worldview and thoughts.

I wish I knew how to quit you.

And I think that's important, to know how the water's gone over the dam before you start to describe it. It helps to have been over the dam yourself.