Another older writer that had a huge influence on me is Chekhov. More contemporarily, it's hard to say.

I tended to write the book in these bursts of two or three months at a time. So I would know, or at least feel securely, that for the next few months I was at least going to have a few hours a day.

You don't have to even see the common man anymore if you don't want to! Only through the telescope on your yacht.

For many years I didn't have health insurance.

I sold a book six years after I left an MFA program. In between, there was a lot of endurance of poverty and a lot of fighting off doubt. It's all a part of the process of being or becoming a writer.

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

To my parents, writing seemed precarious and not the best idea.