When a certain show or film or celebrity captures the imagination of the masses that has a good deal to say about us, I think, and what is happening in our collective psyche.

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.

When a certain show or film or celebrity captures the imagination of the masses that has a good deal to say about us, I think, and what is happening in our collective psyche.

What I find interesting and heartening, though, is that there does seem to be a shift in the subject matter being written about by women that is doing well in the culture. We're seeing more women writing dystopian fiction, more women writing novels set post-apocalyptic settings, subjects and themes that used to be dominated by men.

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 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.

Having a magical element in a realistic setting without explanation seems to me to be the hallmark of fairy tales, which present us with a kind of metaphorical look at some aspect of our lives.