I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing.

If there's any single talent a writer needs, it's persistence. If you can keep at your writing and you can learn as you write, you can tell any story you want to tell.

To get along with God, Consider the consequences of your behavior. Earthseed: The Books of the Living

The big talent is persistence.

I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.

No, I think the future of humanity will be like the past, we'll do what we've always done and there will still be human beings. Granted, there will always be people doing something different and there are a lot of possibilities.

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.