The bottom line is that I like my first drafts to be blind, unconscious, messy efforts; that's what gets me the best material.

It's finished. Everything went past, without me.

I don't think that all girls seek the influence of older men, but I think girls whose fathers are absent or recessed from their lives often do. And honestly, when I was growing up, fathers were generally pretty absent from their children's lives. We didn't see a lot of them. That may be something that has genuinely changed for the better in our culture: men are more present for their children now that more women are working.

The answers were maddeningly absent—it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.

They were snobs or idiots or both...yet she was inexplicably crushed by their coldness.

I don't really know where my ideas come from. I start with a time and a place. That's what I need to get started, and an intellectual question.

The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn't really over, so you're relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL.