I don't really read as much as I used to. A lot of what I was looking for as an escape I find in writing. And the other thing is that I don't want to get into someone else's language when I'm working.
I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?
I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself.
I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.
I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life.
I'm much faster now. When you only have a certain amount of time to write, after a while you learn to use your time well or you stop writing.
I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays.
Ironically, now that my children are older and gone quite a bit, I find it harder to work when they're not around. Too much free time!
It was a great escape for me and it was a way to take a break from what was going on in my own world, to go into another world.
Mothers always find ways to fit in the work - but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working.
The adults don't know what's happening on the kids' universe and the kids don't know what's happening on the adults' universe.
They were written on cheap blue notebooks bought by poor women. I'm interested in folk tales in the way that medicine and magic in women's stories are all kind of combined.
You can try to take sorrow and make it into something enduring, meaningful and beautiful. I always feel guilty that this is my job, that I get to do this.
Sometimes movies really are the best medicine.
