Nothing that readers say or do strikes me as a nuisance. Anyone who cracks open a book of mine is, to me, a gem.
I usually don't work with other people; I do the whole show myself.
I'm a lucky guy. I get to sit around every day and indulge in make believe and get paid for it.
A boy wrote me once to say that he loved it when the news from Lake Wobegon came on the radio because it meant that his parents stopped arguing. That was an eye-opener for me. You work hard to polish your act and then you find out that it does people good in ways you couldn't predict.
As for family values, they are whatever they are - some families are tight, others are blown away like dandelion puffs. A main value in Minnesota is still: don't waste my time, don't B.S. me, I wasn't born yesterday.
I write on a laptop, so it's impossible to count drafts anymore.
I like to sing and it's just really fun to sing, and I don't get too much. And at my house I'm not allowed to because, you know, your children can't stand it when you sing at home.
You don't want to get that sort of sound in your writing that boing that gives you away.
I don't associate work with feelings of satisfaction. Rather, guilt, frustration, and resentment of people who write better than I do.
It's confidence; it has to be something good about getting old. One of the things is that you just don't stress about some stuff that made you so worried.
