What you create when you're teaching fiction writing is a kind of literary salon, not a social club or a mutual admiration society, not a debating society, not a repair shop, not a fight club or a soap box. It's a place to have a conversation about a story.

I lost my job and started painting houses with a friend. The marriage had ended about the same time the career did.

At the heart of all good fiction and at the heart of all good gossip is the same thing: trouble.

Fiction begins with the senses, and the senses go to work in a place.

The purpose of the first draft is not to get it right, but to get it written.

A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?

Revision is not the end of the creative process, but a new beginning. It's a chance not just to clean up and edit, but to open up and discover. The energetic prose comes about from all the energy that went into crafting it, I suppose.