There's an ongoing 'water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink' situation at my house in terms of both pens and paper.
In general, I believe it's fine to have impassioned conversations about Gwyneth Paltrow, but those of us who do so should admit it's a recreational activity and not a moral referendum.
I do think I was trying to entertain the reader more than I was trying to purge myself.
I don't think everyone is equally haunted by high school, but I also don't think it's unusual to be.
My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology.
High school is very intense for everyone. But at a boarding school, because you're there 24 hours a day, everything gets magnified.
I enjoy reading tips about how to be more organized, and I rarely implement them.
When I was writing my first two books I was also freelancing and teaching and doing other odd jobs.
I'm able to separate fiction and reality. I guess it remains to be seen if other people are.
I see 'Eligible' as a homage, and I see 'Pride and Prejudice' as a perfect book. You can dispute whether this project is a good idea, but you can't dispute my fondness for the novel.
Something that's interesting is how my perspective on different events can change over time even though the events themselves haven't changed. As I get older, I interpret something differently, or I can even interpret a person differently.
For most of my life - well, maybe half of my life, but basically until I was in my mid-20s - I wrote stories. From the time I was 5 or 6 until I was 25. And I read a lot of stories during that time.
People who think my books are autobiographical, which they're not, credit me with having a much better memory than I do. I do, however, have a powerful imagination.
For 'Gender Studies,' I wrote that story in May and June of 2016. People have said to me, 'Oh, it's a political allegory,' and I think, 'Sure.' The political stuff is definitely there. But that's why I like fiction; there can be lots of different things going on, and it's all intertwined, and you can't separate out what's in what category.
I don't really have special rituals, but I don't try to write fiction unless I have a minimum of a few hours. For me, it takes a while to settle into a mode where I'm truly concentrating.
I have this theory that the likeability question comes up so much more with female characters created by female authors than it does with male characters and male authors.
It's never that hard for me to imagine what it must feel like to be someone else, whether it's an American teenage girl or a Japanese octogenarian man.
Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try.
I'm so trying to give up meat.
I just write the books that I think I would want to read.
