I did want to feel like life's all of one piece.

In a creative journey, it is essential, no matter how far one runs, to examine that which is closest to home.

At some point each day (well, most days) I unroll my mat and practice for an hour. I sit in meditation for a while. This can be five minutes or twenty minutes, but the daily practice - simply showing up for it - is centering.

We're all simultaneously separated and connected by our devices, staring into our little screens, and also hungry for experience and community.

There’s a great expression in Twelve Step programs: Act as if. Act as if you’re a writer. Sit down and begin. Act as if you might just create something beautiful, and by beautiful I mean something authentic and universal. Don’t wait for anybody to tell you it’s okay. Take that shimmer and show us our humanity. That’s your job.

Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.

When I was writing my first novel, I smoked cigarettes. And when I think about what it was like to smoke, I remember exactly the feeling of sitting in front of my big old computer in that little room where I wrote my first novel.