and you’re trying to really look for the ‘about-ness’…. And if you try too hard, then you will only write ‘the about.’ You won’t discover anything.”

In writing programs, they talk about finding your voice. I think what they’re really saying is find your audience.”

The very act of finding one’s bearings as a writer, or exploring within the laws of a particular cosmology, can often unleash a sense of excitement and prolific creative output.

“The antecedent stages to Satori: quest, search, ripening and explosion. The

I’m trying to get at the parts that I think are amazing…the things I care about.”

a film needs “a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”

“I am always unclear when people say they love writing but don’t like editing. To me they are the same.

is, for her, a source of some of her deepest questions.

That focus, for the novelist, is the filter through which certain very specific issues become relevant.