Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.

Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.

Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?

So I'm not a Southern writer in the commonly held sense of the term, like Faulkner or Eudora Welty, who took the South for their entire literary environment and subject matter.

The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.