Personally, I have never wished I were a male novelist.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.

I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.

Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?--and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

I think I write what's interesting to me, and so if I'm reading I like to have a very thorough idea of a character in a book that's by someone else.

It's different to read a book for pleasure than to read it analytically. In the past, I'd read Pride and Prejudice for pleasure. This time, I was really looking at the structure, the order of events, how the characters interact with each other and how the book is paced.

I think in general, novels by men tend to be taken more seriously than novels by women.