When I Was Writing My First Draft,

The Belief That One's Suffering Has A Greater Cosmic Purpose, And Is Thus More Exciting And More Noble, Well, It Made A Lot Of Sense To Me.

If I Can Just Stop Being So Stressed Out, Maybe My Cancer Will Get Better! This Is Far Less Scary Than Treating A Disease Of Unknown Etiology.

I Calmed Myself By Walking Into My Nearby Bookstore And Marveling At All The Books Other People Had Written. So Many People Had Finished And Published Novels; It Couldn’t Be So Hard, Right?

A Logic Proof Is: You Get A Starting Point And An Ending Point, And You Have To Get There Through All These Different Steps And Tautologies. I Approach Novel Writing That Way. When I Get To The End I Have To Go Back And Connect Everything.

I Obviously Read And Adore Traditional Fiction. I Teach Traditional Fiction; I Also Teach All Kinds Of Not-so-traditional Fiction.