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You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it's really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.

I've been writing, in one way or another, for as long as I can remember.

I do a lot of revising on paper. Sometimes I think I should just write longhand - what I type reads very different once I print it out.

My writing is progressing slowly, but at least it's moving forward. I'm sure that's the case. The only problem is that I'm never absolutely certain that what I've written is any good.

It takes me a long time to write, and I trust myself, so I write very sparsely, so when I do, I know it's good, you know what I mean? Rather than writing a whole bunch and having to sort out what's good and what's not.

Writing is one of the few activities where quantity will inevitably make quality. The more you write, the better you're going to get at it.

Writing is like playing golf - you have to keep working at your swing.

Write every day, just to keep in the habit, and remember that whatever you have written is neither as good nor as bad as you think it is. Just keep going, and tell yourself that you will fix it later.

The first draft of everything, I write longhand. One of the nice things about that is that it makes you keep going. If you write a bad sentence on the computer, then it's very tempting to go back and fidget with it and spend another 20 minutes trying to make it into a good sentence.

I really don't write much anymore, and I'm not uncomfortable with that. I've tried writing and the sentences come out fine, but I write a few pages and I don't want to go on.