Sometimes the only way to fix a mistake- is to make it twice.

Don't shame the young for releasing their pent-up fear.

I'm a writer of faith. I was raised Catholic, and I have a deeply Catholic imagination.

I have faith in human beings. I struggle with that faith.

As a writer, my main objective is to tell the story urgently - as if whispering it into one ear - and to know the characters intimately.

Sometimes when reading aloud to my husband, I'll start crying. It completely stuns me. As if the words in my body and on the page - in relation to each other - are cocooned against my own feelings about what I'm writing until they're loosed in the air and become their own. Then I realize what I may or may not have done.

I prefer a cluttered workspace.