I always had a hard time with fiction. It does feel like driving a car in a clown suit. You're going somewhere, but you're in costume, and you're not really fooling anybody. You're the guy in costume, and everybody's supposed to forget that and go along with you. Obviously, it can work, it works all the time - well, it doesn't always work. Still, no matter what, I'm always looking at the form and addressing it, not ignoring it.

I can remember exactly where I sat when my teacher first read Roald Dahl's 'James and the Giant Peach'.

A combination of acting, lying, begging, and cheating.

Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.

I've always been interested in the form itself, so I always feel like I've never been good at going ahead with the artifice and not acknowledging the self in the artistic process, and not acknowledging the absurdity of pretending that's required in fiction.

WHEN we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don't blame the soldiers.

Also, I need deadlines, just like everybody else, especially coming from magazines, newspapers, and stuff like that. I need daily or weekly deadlines to get stuff done, or I continue to do things and not go off on a year of unproductivity.