A product name has to be specific. You know that Tasty Soup is tasty - that Hot Chips will burn off the roof of your mouth.
I tell myself that some names can be mistakes, like Mxyplyzyk, a store in New York that lost customers because few could spell its name to look up the address. I tell myself that lots of writers agonize over titles, and often get them wrong at first.
All writers know how important a good title is. It's the first thing readers see, along with a knock-your-socks-off cover - a seductive 'come hither' for the story within.
A lot of people hurl themselves into relationships to lose themselves, but I think the best relationships help us to be more ourselves, to bring forth our best selves.
L.A. is a place people come to for all sorts of reasons, often to reinvent themselves, and that fascinates me.
I had a writing professor at Brandeis who told me I'd never make it - and when I sold my first novel a few years later, I sent him a copy!
I think I became a writer because of my love of stories and an inability to stop asking, 'What if?'
Open adoption, when it works, is fabulous. But when it goes wrong, it's so traumatizing for everybody.
Literature can allow us to experience the best side of humankind, where instead of giving up, we struggle desperately in the ruins for love, connection and hope.
Writing is really hard, and it's really a skill.
I absolutely want and prize and love and revere every single media review I get, but if I got 50 reviews from major newspapers and one review from Amazon, I still would feel a little weird: 'What's going on? Why aren't people responding?'
If a kid disappears, now there's Amber Alerts: they know this-this-this. In the '50s, we kids wandered around. Nobody knew what you were doing.
I had a nervous breakdown at 17 when my first love left me, and he was a typical bad boy, albeit a charismatic one, with a string of broken hearts trailing behind him.
I call Algonquin Books 'the gods and goddesses of publishing.' Not only did they give me a career, they care deeply about every writer in their flock.
Housewives of the 1950s were supposed to create show-stopping meals every night for their hard-working husbands.
While some of the big publishers might give out 200,000 advances, if your book does not hit some of the lists in the second week, they stop paying attention to you.
I write about what haunts me, and I write the books I myself am dying to read. I love it. I can't think of anything I'd rather do.
I'm a big believer in quantum physics, which says that the universe is more incredible and mysterious than any of us can imagine, which is my way of saying, 'Anything is possible, including angels.'
Everyone thinks that a new place or a new identity will jumpstart a new life.
