As writers, we live very much in our own minds much of the time, buzzing in our unconscious spaces as we go about the business of living in the world.

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.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you know you have to hit the ground running.

You're thinking about the continuum of life as you load the washing machine or scoop out the litter box.blue-girl-larger Or maybe that's just me. That seems to be an endlessly challenging and interesting way to live.

As a reader I gravitate toward work that rests in the gray area, that doesn't come with easy answers.

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.

Fundamentally I think we all write the kinds of work we'd most like to read. Or we try to.