If men are paid/praised more than women for the same work than it always pays to allow the man to have more freedom to pour himself into his work - think of athletes, actors over the age of 28, lawyers, accountants, college deans.

Writing across genres has made me more prolific. When one is fighting me or simply not cutting it, I turn to another.

When a colleague of mine had a notable New York Times book, I said, turn one of the chapters in the collection into a pitch for a novel and sell it to your publisher.

I was born in the era of the novel. I've written many, as well as collections of poetry, and essays for mouthing off. I've written to inches, word-counts, page-counts, even the sonnet and the screenplay (which I call a plot poem). I write narrative. That's it. I just want to tell it.

Being cross-genre, you can encounter an image and decide not only how to best express it but what form would express it best.

I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.

I've left the Church - for many reasons that I've written about publicly - but it's still a large part of my identity, and I still have my faith, if not my Church.