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I'm working with published authors and some very young undergraduates and lots of people in between. They are lovely people, and they can write.

Both my mother and I have close groups of friends that include other writers, and these friendships are very important to us.

Ultimately I'm the writer for me, but also, anytime one of my friends gets stuck with a bit, they can call me, and I'm pretty good at helping them get there.

I love writers. All of my best friends are writers.

I write slowly by hand. Publishing is effectively bankrupt for you unless you are Danielle Steele. It takes a year to write book and advances are going down or disappearing.

I have been lucky with writers. None have been real trouble. Some I never met. Some I meet only after the book is finished, and some, the easiest to get along with, are the dead ones. Most become friends.

Publishing is a business of relationships. The relationships you make at one house can carry over to another.

I'm blessed in my good friends, and some of them happen to be writers, though that's almost never what our friendships are about. And every writer I've ever read, living or dead, has in one way or another helped and inspired. I have a feeling it's important not to mix the two up.

If you want to be a writer, you write. Everybody wants to get published. You gotta play your long game.