Novels are written, not wished into existence. You have to sit your ass in the chair or nothing gets done.

If you think about it, fiction is nothing more than gossip about the people you've made up.

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

You can't possibly conduct a proper affair without a lot of deliberating, scheming, speculating, and conniving. It's a delicate balance where the excitement must equal the guilt and sex must be as bright as the future you gamble.

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.

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

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