I always think, OK, this is good, but I'll do it better next time. "And so we beat on, boats against the current. . ." It may not be the recipe for a life of contentment, but that imperfectability is what makes writing such an engaging endeavor, something you can do for the rest of your life and not get bored.

I worked every waking minute, nights and weekends, in order to make enough money to buy those summers off, and even then we wouldn't have made it except that my mother helped out with a yearly check and my father bought me a car when my old one die

The trajectory of my writing has moved further and further away from autobiography. My first stories in Confessions of a Falling Woman worked familiar territory - places I had lived, people I knew, my life as an actor in New York - and many were prompted by or grounded in personal experience.

I loved short stories, and they were all I wanted to write. I love the compression of them and the exactitude needed to get a whole world into such a small space.

I just can't fathom tweeting, and I'd rather spend my time writing a book than a blog, but I rather grudgingly agreed to a Facebook page. I had a brief, intense romance with Facebook. It's weirdly addictive, but anything that time-sucking is a danger for a writer who writes as slowly as I do. Now I post only occasionally and nothing very confessional. I think I'm carbon dating myself as I speak.

Whatever one may say about the perils of workshops, they help writers internalize an awareness of audience.

Peculiar as I was, and remain, I was trained to be practical. I'm still amazed at the radical temerity of my friends, you included, Julie, who choose poetry as their vocation. I envy your faith.