writer’s block

“Writing is always a restorative process. It’s like paddling a kayak. When you’re writing, you can’t do anything else. You’re in the space you’re in. So, in that way, it’s enormously centering and restorative.’

“And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.”

“My fiction is almost always inspired by a character’s need or desire to rise above him- or herself. No one is perfect and some of us have much adversity in our lives; it is those people who struggle to rise above their nature or background that I find the most interesting and heroic.

“Usually, when people get to the end of a chapter, they close the book and go to sleep. I deliberately write a book so when the reader gets to the end of the chapter, he or she must turn one more page.”

“Just go outside and look at something and write it down and you’ll find it is a very nice piece of writing.”

“I have the “thing” worked out – the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.”

“Writing is an escape from a world that crowds me. I like being alone in a room. It’s almost a form of meditation- an investigation of my own life.”

“When I am thickening my plots, I like to think ‘What if … What if … ‘ Thus my imagination can move from the likely, which everyone can think of, to the unlikely-but-possible, my preferred plot.”