When I write, I never think of segments as chapters; I think of them as scenes. I always visualize them in my mind. Then I try to get the scene down on paper as closely as I can. That's the one thing that readers don't see - what you have in your mind. The reader can only see what you get on the page.

When people say they write for themselves, that's probably what they do. I will admit that I don't write for myself; I write to be read. I've got the reader in my mind all the time.

It would be nice to avoid the world, to leave it and all its threats and unhappiness. Not to die or anything like that, but to find a place of solitude and solace.

I don't think I began to be a professional writer until I learned my weaknesses and what I couldn't do. This forced me to compensate.

You seldom get a censorship attempt from a 14-year-old boy. It's the adults who get upset.

The rewriting is always crucial to what I do; whenever I do a scene, I always tell myself that this isn't final and that I can do it again, better. The pacing is probably from experience. I've always liked gradual disclosure. I keep thinking of my rubber-band theory. You have a rubber band that you keep pulling and pulling and pulling, and just at the moment of snapping you release it and start another chapter and start pulling again.

There is very little that is accidental in my work. I believe in serendipity for developments of plot, but the actual writing is arrived at by very hard work. The joy of writing doesn't mean that you don't get the backaches and headaches and the days when it's not coming.