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

You will feel discouraged; you will lose confidence in your abilities; you will be bored with the characters–and the only way to overcome these obstacles is to write your way through them. And writing always works.

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.

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.

A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.

Place is character. And all writing is regional.

In revision, your imagination becomes deeply engaged with your material. It's when you come to know your characters and begin to perceive their motivations and values.