I spend three hours a day writing and the rest of my day getting over it.

Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.

In most good stories, it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.

Even a child with normal feet was in love with the world after he had got a new pair of shoes.

Writing is a good example of self-abandonment. I never completely forget myself except when I am writing and I am never more completely myself than when I am writing.

Unadaptability is often a virtue.

A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell them to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.