Listening takes practice, and it takes patience. But I promise, if you listen, your story will be better for it.

Where I came from, no one was a writer.

When you're writing a novel, you're still telling a story. But you're telling it very differently. It's a craft like anything else.

Traditionally, people have been adapting novels and short stories forever. Now, they're doing it simultaneously, with an eye towards writing the movie before the novel has even come out or been finished. It's a function of this hyper-accelerated society we live in, where everyone is trying to short circuit the process.

I feel like a centrist, an issue-specific person. I'm pretty conservative fiscally and pretty liberal on social issues.

I have a ways to go as a novelist. But what's great is, well, I frankly enjoyed the solitude. And I enjoyed being able to tell characters what to say and do without negotiating with an actor.

In some ways, a novel isn't as structurally rigorous as a screenplay or a TV show, which have finite real estate. In a novel, you can more deeply illuminate a character's interior and get away with digressions.