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After writing each novel, I would spend days poring over suggestions from my editor.

I consider what I write to be literature. I choose the words carefully.

When I start a new novel and find myself diverted by domestic activities, many of which I genuinely enjoy, I panic that I will never write another word.

I'm really such a bumbler! Writing fiction is like arranging furniture in a dark room. I can't see what I'm doing. I grope for the right words. I bump against the wrong words and stumble and stub my toe and curse and keep trying to guess what belongs in the space.

When I write a book, I'm making it the best book I can.

I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me.

Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.

I edit as I write. I revise endlessly. I don't go forward until I know that what I've written is as good as I can make it.

I knew I wanted to write novels, but I could not finish what I started. The closer I got, the more ways I'd find to screw it up.

When I'm writing, I am lost in my book. Except family and close friends, I don't care about what critics, publishers or readers might think.