As people who are women, who are Indigenous and live on Indigenous lands, we know, and this is something I understand the older I get, that they don't visit the same way the postman may visit but they do visit. They visit in ways that our modern society often disregards and considers immaterial or unreal.

The comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.

If you start thinking about who's going to read it [you're writing], or what grade will you get, or is it going to win that award, or are you going to get into this graduate program, you're blocking the light, and the light is that guidance and love we get when we open up our hearts and are guided by our higher selves, or God, or the Buddha Lupe [Buddha and the Virgin of Guadalupe fused together, as they are in the tattoo on Sandra's right arm], or whatever you believe in, or love.

I do travel a lot, because I need oxygen, I need to go to places to meet people who aren't upset at me because I'm asking for peace.

The ability to be present with every single person and engage was a great model for me of the work that a writer needs to do. Writers, living or dead, still guide me in many ways.

Those of us who are writers and have to perform to communities that aren't used to coming to book events, I would recommend taking some theater.

I have to say my favorite stories are ghost stories. I don't like to see these made-up monster films or scary films with ghosts. It doesn't do anything to me. But a real ghost story that someone tells me, that I like.