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I think after you write something and you're finished with it, there is a sense of loss. That this is a world I can't really re-enter the way that I could when I was working on it. The covers of the book close it to the writer.

I often feel like not writing! Sometimes I overcome it by just sitting there until writing happens. Sometimes I don't write, because books often need periods of percolation.

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

What I've become convinced makes a writer are the days you hate it, the days you'd rather stick those pencils in your eyes. Sometimes I almost punish myself - if I'm not going be able to write, I'm not going be able to do anything else. I just sit there and wait.

Writers always have confidence issues - it comes with the territory. We never know where we fit in, or what the actual value of our work might be. So we hit lulls, or slogs. Throw in the idea that many creative people are somewhat manic-depressive, and it can get pretty dark at times.

There are many days when I want to throw my computer out the window, when I tell myself I'd be better off selling shoes at the mall. But I always keep at it, because I have to. Writing is completely part of who I am. Even if I never published another book, I would keep at it - because it feeds my life and makes it richer.

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult.

If I lose, then I have to accept that my way of writing books is not the way society says it's okay to write.

I don't understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It's very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.

Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.