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First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.

I've written short stories in first person, but you have so much more control writing in third person. Third person, you know what everybody's thinking. First person is very limiting, and I could never sustain a first person novel before.

Writing is hard work. Generating stories that catch people's attention and holding it are very difficult.

If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

One of the strategies for doing first-person is to make the narrator very knowing, so that the reader is with somebody who has a take on everything they observe.

Writing is a process of discovering. I could never outline a narrative; that just sounds boring. There's no joy of discovery in what you're doing if that's your strategy.

Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.

The first job of a storyteller is to make the reader feel the story, to get the reader to live in the skin of the character.

In order for a narrative to work, the primary character should have a concrete desire - a need that drives her story - and the story's writer should make this goal known to the reader pretty early in the narrative.

I like the story writing process. I usually use someone who has been trained for structure to take the story that I actually want, place those elements in the right places.