If it's all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it's all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that's it. You're not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You're not going to read that book again.

Don't wait until you're 'in the mood.' Get into the mood by writing.

And she finds it difficult to believe—that a person would love her even when she isn't trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy.

Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.

She who pays the undertaker calls the tune.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.

I grew up in the golden age of Flash Gordon and sci-fi.