As a filmmaker, you complete a film you have spent years obsessively making, and you know the release prints will never look quite the same; prints get scratched and dirty.
The two things I use the most are the MacBook Air and my iPhone. Those are my two most-used gadgets that are dented, scratched and smashed.
I can't help but recall my dad and mom. Depression era kids, 8th and 9th grade educations, clawed and scratched to make a living as dairy farmers their whole life. At least two drought cycles nearly took it all away. They just worked harder, longer... and they made it.
I use my non-stick pans as very specific tools. They're my egg pans. They live by themselves, in a cabinet. They go in their own home. They will never get scratched.
People often want the big dramatic works, not the smaller quieter ones, but I don't worry about how it fits together anymore; I just have to do it. I feel compelled to make a work: it's like an itch I have to scratch, and once it's been scratched, it goes away.
To be honest, I still feel like I haven't scratched the surface of where I want to be. If someone asked me for an autograph, I'd be like, 'Me? I haven't done anything yet !' I have much more to offer the world.
Journalists often ask me when I go to the field, 'What do you expect to find?' And my answer always is, 'The unexpected,' because we're just looking at the tip of the iceberg; we've just scratched the surface.
Revising stuff lately, I was shocked to see how often my characters scratched their ankles, felt their feet, and touched their own ears.
I ran the Iditarod twice. I finished once. I came in 42nd or 43rd place out of 70 plus teams the first time, and I scratched 80 miles from Nome the second time. You can read about my experience in the race in my books 'Woodsong' and 'Winterdance.'
I got three 'Tiger Woods' games for my Xbox just in case one gets scratched.
