I think it's hard to have a full-time job and write fiction, but for essays, you need to be in the world.

Every day of my adult life, I have worn at least one piece of jewelry from my maternal grandmother's collection, all of which were manufactured by famed Danish silversmith Georg Jensen. To the naked eye, I am either a Jensen loyalist or a grandmother loyalist. Really I am just a Pretty Things loyalist.

Out of all artists, authors are the least trained for the spotlight. Wanting attention isn't a requisite part of the package.

But now my problems had been set loose. They could be anywhere at any time and I was just like everyone else I knew: almost positive that there was something profoundly and undiagnosably wrong with me.

I write on weekends, on vacation, and, really - on deadline and on my floor. Both terrible for the back.

My personality, when tasked with creating meals, goes something like this: Is there a way we can make this more difficult? Because let's do that. I don't mean to complicate things. It's just - why buy pre-packaged potato salad when you can spend your morning boiling potatoes and flipping out because there's no dill in the house?

For a long time I wanted to draw, but I could never get the proportions right. My still life sketches were the artistic equivalent of someone who has misjudged the space constraints of a postcard, the handwriting shrinking uncomfortably at the bottom.