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

As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story.

We read novels because we need stories; we crave them; we can’t live without telling them and hearing them. Stories are how we make sense of our lives and of the world. When we’re distressed and go to therapy, our therapist’s job is to help us tell our story. Life doesn’t come with plots; it’s messy and chaotic; life is one damn, inexplicable thing after another. And we can’t have that. We insist on meaning. And so we tell stories so that our lives make sense.

The universe may be tenderly indifferent to our fate, but we shouldn’t be. We are our brothers’ keepers. There is right, and there is wrong. There are consequences to our actions or inactions. Disregard can be an act of violence.

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

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

I revise like crazy. I start revising before the pen hits the paper.