At least in my case, a very simple, regular, happy life makes for better writing.

I've never wanted to chuck my mortgage, drop the kids off at their grandparents' and run gloriously naked in fields of flax.

In this moment that blooms and fades as it passes, he is enough, and all is well in the world.

Who, in the midst of passion, is vigilant against illness? Who listens to the reports of recently decimated populations in Spain, India, Bora Bora, when new lips, tongues and poems fill the world?

Reading about utopianism, and eventually creating characters with their own utopian ambitions, was the way I learned to live with being a pregnant person, to stave off the sense of incipient disaster. You're bringing a person into this overcrowded world, knowing they're one day going to die and there's nothing you can do about it.

I love writing from enclosed spaces: you really learn about your characters when they have tight walls to push against.

We need the skeletons of other stories to understand our own, sometimes.