They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.

We all start out with the same alphabet. We are all unique. Talent is not the most important thing --- discipline and dedication are. Craft can be learned but desire and longing are innate. Despite the demands of school and just being young, try to write SOMETHING every day --- a description, a captured emotion, a simile, a metaphor. Read, for crying out loud! A writer must read the way a ball player must go to the ballfield every day to practice. Everything is possible in this world of ours--- and so's publication.

That's what Archie did - built a house nobody could anticipate a need for, except himself, a house that was invisible to everyone else.

I'm always telling myself as I write that I'm not really writing a novel; I'm just going to fool around with a character or an idea.

It doesn't matter how big the body, it's what you do with it.

Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt 'safe' there.

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.