As soon as you start to question your own intent while you're still in the process of discovering your story, you're in trouble because you've pulled out of that unconscious space that is so necessary in the beginning of the drafting process.

As soon as you start to question your own intent while you're still in the process of discovering your story, you're in trouble because you've pulled out of that unconscious space that is so necessary in the beginning of the drafting process.

I'm not conscious of my own themes as I write first drafts, no, and in fact, I work hard to stay in that unconscious space and not ask myself what the novel is about or what my metaphors might mean because then, I think, you're just dead in the water.

I've always gone with Kafka's model of establishing the world from the first line, as in Kafka's famous line from Metamorphosis, "Gregor Samsa woke up from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect" (or beetle or cockroach, depending on the translation). I have to have that first line before I can go further.

I think it's still difficult to write about motherhood and anxiety, that talking about not wanting to be a mother or feeling ambivalent about motherhood makes people uneasy. The ambivalent mother is certainly much more interesting.

I don't see the direct correlation between my personal life and the novel I'm writing until I'm at the end of the novel or very close to it.

I don't mind being called a "feminist," as I certainly embrace the tenets of feminism, though it does feel a little sad to me that we need to call a novel "feminist" simply because the female characters are interesting and strong.