The key to mostly anything is pretending your first time isn't.

It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.

Writing is a necessity and often a pleasure, but at the same time, it can be a great burden and a terrible struggle.

Yet I'm making a book and I'm going to care immensely about what words get bound in the pages, and I want the object to look good. I won't believe in it and it won't be real to me until there's a finished book I can hold.

I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example.

The level at which my OCD enters my writing process isn't that I slap the keyboard - it's more along the lines of a compulsive need to swap syllables around, rework words and sentences - I revise for the pleasure and satisfaction of it, rather than out of a sense of duty.

I have no one to blame for the construction for myself, of course, but I'm always surprised and slightly sulky when I realizeВ people are buying the whole thing.