There's no really other way to learn writing than by writing. So accelerate that as much as you can. The more you write, the better you'll get. What also helps, though, is walking away from broken stuff. Not everything's going to work. Killing two years of your life trying to resuscitate a dying novel, I don't know. Why not just write a different one? You'll have more ideas. You can't help having ideas.

This is form and content and diction and tone and imagination all looking up at the exact same moment: When Molly Tanzer claps once at the front of the classroom.

Football's another sport I absolutely despise. Along with baseball. Really, for me, basketball's the only real sport, the only one that matters.

It's important to look ahead, I think, to shape your stuff for - again - effect. Because it's just so easy to write long, flowy sentences, get lost in them. The hard part's making them matter, making yourself make them matter.

I do love the challenge of screenplays. They're so difficult, such an alien form. It makes them endlessly fascinating. Something I can't keep my fingers out of.

The stories I respect most aren't those with the rich, dense prose, but those which achieve a rich, deep effect with simple little nothing-sentences, lines I won't possibly remember, because they simply functioned, didn't draw attention to themselves, were properly humble.

Angels, demons, sex. Heaven, hell, war. Blood and royalty, history and magic, fire and ice. And a story you cannot put down. This is fantasy at its best.