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I actually started trying to be a professional writer with novels, and I wrote two that exist and are around... kind of. But they never really went anyplace in particular. I still like them both. What it showed me was that you can spend years on a novel, and then it could just be, like, OK, you spent that time and that's that.

Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled.

I didn't know anything about romance novels until a friend suggested that I try writing one. After I read a few, I realized that my favorite part of fiction had always been the relationship aspect.

A novel is a big thing. It's difficult to hold the whole story in your mind, especially when you've finished a first draft and are still giddy from the flow of creative juices.

Writing a novel is not at all like riding a bike. Writing a novel is like having to redesign a bike, based on laws of physics that you don't understand, in a new universe. So having written one novel does nothing for you when you have to write the second one.

The first book you write because of the way it makes you feel. The second one you can't help but wonder how it's going to make the reader feel.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that's the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don't understand.

I really enjoy writing novels. It's like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.