As with editing, I think my strength as a writer is structure. It's not a skill that's much discussed when we discuss fiction, or not as much as language or character development anyway, but it's the first thing I determine before I begin writing - not just books, but anything. I think I know how to pace a narrative well. I think I'm aware of repetition, that I try to create different kinds of sentences as often as I can. Those are all things I learned from magazine editing.

I know I'm a better editor than I was when I began, twenty years ago. I'm less scared of the text, I'm less scared of the writer, and, crucially, I no longer believe that I have to leave my mark on every story.

When you don't have to depend upon your creative work for money, you'll never really have to compromise... Knowing that is hugely liberating as well as artistically clarifying... Being practical about where your money comes from means you can be romantic about your writing... I believe that a healthy society is one that supports its artists, but I also know that that privilege, of being only an artist, is afforded to just a small number. Most of us have to find something else - or live a highly disciplined life, which I'm not willing to do.

Health insurance, which is exceedingly difficult to secure as an individual in New York. Obamacare, while certainly better than nothing, is pretty awful, and if you have a complicated health history, as I do, you need premium insurance, which means private insurance. The challenge, though, is finding a company that will give you the privilege of paying up to $1,400 a month for it. When I didn't have a job, I spent more time thinking about insurance - not just paying for it, but securing it in the first place - than I wanted to.

It is always sort of unnerving to hear from people who've read my books. I'm not reading any of the reviews and most of my friends haven't read it - they bought it, which is all I frankly care about, but they haven't read it.

I think I'm a reporter's editor. Being a good reporter is a specific skill, one I admire and don't possess myself - I appreciate people who know how to ask the right questions, who are excellent researchers, who know how to assemble information, and I enjoy working with them to shape their information into an article. Good reporters tend to be receptive to editing, and to a more collaborative form of writing in general, and you always end up learning more from how they work than you expect you will.

In the 1950s that tug-of-war between the expectations of behaving normally and the limitlessness of thinking freely produces some very strange characters.