With a little persuasion, any familiar thing can turn abnormal in the mind. Here's a thought experiment. Consider this brutal bit of magic. A human grows a second human in a space inside her belly; she grows a second heart and a second brain, second eyes and second limbs, a complete set of second body parts as if for use as spares, and then, after almost a year, she expels that second screaming being out of her belly and into the world, alive. Bizarre, isn't it?

It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.

To be a good editor or a good writer, I think you really need to be a great reader first.

Nothing has happened to me out of the closet that was anywhere near as dangerous as being closeted.

My goal was just to tell the unlikely story in a way that would feel as convincing as possible.

My sentences got sharper and my stories more efficient, and I gradually learned to imagine the reader more clearly and to empathize with that imagined reader, which is a crucial part of learning to tell stories.

I really believe that fiction functions best when stories are allowed to develop in an organic way, so I didn't set out to deliver a specific message.