I Always Worry That Knowing Too Much

I Know A Lot Of People Don't Listen To Music When They're Writing Because It Distracts Them, But For Me It's Almost A Way To Get Into The Self-hypnotic State That I Need To Be In To Write.

You Can Recognize In Your Own Reading Habits What Writers Are Doing That Works And What Doesn't. I'm Becoming Much More Aware Of That After Reading A Decade Of Student Stories.

When I Was Younger I Was Attracted To People Who Had That Kind Of Artifice - People Who Were Incredibly Polished And Had A Complex Persona That Always Seemed To Be Turned On. I Was Really Interested In These Kinds Of People Because I Felt So Unformed.

Plot Was Always Secondary In My Mind.

I Usually Have More Than One Thing I'm Working On At Once -- I've Been Working On Three Different Novels. When I Get Stuck On One, I Hop Back And Forth. It's Sort Of Freeing: I Can Say I'm Abandoning This Thing That I Hate Forever And I'm Moving On To Something That's Good. I'll Find That I'll Go Back To [the Other Project] In A Day Or A Week And Like It Again. But That Moment Of Wanting To Trash Something -- That Virginia Woolf Moment When You Have To Be Stopped From Filling Your Pocket With Stones -- Comes Pretty Regularly For Me. Switching Is Probably A Good Thing.