It's easier to write about a place sometimes when you've left it, when you can apply your imagination to your memory and let your emotions guide the writing about a place.

I think I've learned to be mindful. I may not have taken the time to try to understand narrative techniques, let's say, with any rigor, if I did not also have to try to explain those techniques to someone else.

I was always writing. I just didn't know if I was any good.

You lose a wallet or keys or something and you notice in a second, but your life can go missing and you don't even know it.

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

I grew up in a house without many books. The books the nuns made us read in school didn't interest me.

Place is character. And all writing is regional.