What I wound up doing, which I think is really journalistically dubious, is changing the order of some of the things I did, so that the things I ended up struggling with the most wind up being two-thirds of the way in.

Online reaction is very different than real-world reaction.

You can get away with stuff in a one-page story that you can't get away with in a book.

I've definitely written people e-mails telling them I've loved their stories, but that seems more like a professional journalist thing to do.

You're not going to change anyone's mind. Especially online.

I hate walking up to strangers.

I have some idea that if I pick on [boy band] One Direction, I'll get a ton of hate mail, because I know that when you're 15, you love a band like you will kill people. But I don't quite realize that that's true about people - adults - who read The Hunger Games.