Ever since high school I've been writing in a spiral notebook, in pencil. Everything looks too polished on a computer when you start writing, and I can't really see it. I feel like the words are much more naked in pencil, on a notebook.

I've always thought of writing as sort of active communication.

I think of companies like Nokia having anthropologists who study how people use cell phones, who do that kind of commercial and marketing work, selling out to corporations. I wonder if that has something to do with the image of the more innocent anthropologist, now gone.

It also signals to me, when I pick up a pencil, that this is a rough draft. This is not going anywhere, and no one's going to see it. You have permission to make all the mistakes you want. It signals freedom to me, and it signals mistakes.

I don't like stories where I'm being given pages and pages of detail.

Every fictional thing I wrote gave me strength to write another and another. By the end I wasn't remaining true to anything but the story I wanted to tell.

You write the facts as you see them, and there isn't a lull with a lot of description. No wonder people like to write about murder mysteries and dead bodies!