I have a daughter who, when younger, possessed no barrier between her emotional self and the outside world. Her emotional insides spilled out all over, and, especially when I was sleep-deprived and probably a little paranoid, this really threatened me. It was as if she were embodying and expressing the insecurities and freaked-outedness I never express, and which I've learned over the years to keep hidden.

A logic proof is: you get a starting point and an ending point, and you have to get there through all these different steps and tautologies. I approach novel writing that way. When I get to the end I have to go back and connect everything.

I don't usually read my reviews. I've noticed older reviewers are much more bothered by the plot complications. Younger reviews don't seem to be bothered by the complications at all.

I've subsequently become conscious of MAKING MEMORIES. Which makes me sound like a scrapbooker.

I really did for a few weeks think, I'm in pain because the world needs me to save it. Which is so ridiculous and egotistical.

We're not saints, any of us. Maybe somebody is, but I don't know those people. But we all know people who behave very smugly and are very egotistical and put you down as a manner of improving their own place in the world or improving their own place in the world.

As such, anything is always possible, even if your protagonist is a plumber. But it's the possibility, the limitless possibilities, of any fake life, that make writing about it so challenging.