When I was a kid, I got in trouble for lying a lot, and I had a teacher say, instead of lying, write it down, because if you write it down, it's not a lie anymore; it's fiction.
I always say I write because I have lots of questions, not because I have any answers.
I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories.
I think it's important to remember that writing is a gift and our stories are gifts to ourselves and to the world and sometimes giving isn't always the easiest thing to do but it comes back.
When I'm writing flawed characters, I just think about my own flaws.
That's what writing is. It's moving past your fear.
I think that happens for a lot of people, they have this idea that there's only one type of way to write poetry and that you have to have this information. You have to know about meter, you have to know about form, you have to know about iambic pentameter, and all of that.
Sometimes, I don't know that words for things, how to write down the feeling of knowing that every dying person leaves something behind.
Everything I write, I read out loud. It has to sound a certain way. It has to look a certain way on the page.
Because I write realistic fiction, I generally don't think about fixing anyone - I just think about how I want to feel at the end of the book - And I try to write toward that feeling.
Mainly, I try not to think about my readers as I write - I just think of my characters and myself - If they're interesting to me, my hope is that they'll be interesting to others as well.
Yes, writing is not easy. But can any writer imagine NOT writing?
