I think that if you just write your characters you end up with something that people can access.

Certainly I had from an early age a sense of the power and beauty of religious texts - the awesome magnitude of the Bible stories I was reading as a child. The hymns. The sermons. I can still vividly hear the sermons and the pieces of soft piano music played after them, the preacher asking if anyone wanted to come up to the altar and accept Christ as their savior.

I think being consistent is really important. In the arts there's a misconception that you sit around waiting for the muse to come, and that it's all really mystical and mysterious. In reality, sometimes you have to fake it till you make it.

I try to find the beauty in things. On dark days, I sit in my armchair looking at clouds and I am awed at how rain is made.

Even if you don't feel like sitting down to write or working on that big proposal, or whatever it is, just show up anyhow and the rest will follow.

I like to say I had a very varied undergraduate education. I was an English major first, and then at the end of my college career I decided I was interested in urban planning. I became an urban studies major, with a minor in poetry. I don't think I knew what I was looking for in my early twenties, but I know I kept not finding it.

One of the things that writers worry about is finding a voice. I don't think it's a thing that you find so much as it is something that comes to you, or that presents itself.