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When I work on a novel, I usually have one character and a setting in mind.

I try to talk about things I know about. But my characters are more of a combination of people or how I imagine people would feel.

As a novelist, I tend to know significantly more about my characters than I do about my friends.

I get very involved in my characters. Sometimes I have a very hard time separating my characters from my life.

The nature of my work is my subjectivity meshed with other people's subjectivity. So there's a correspondence with that... Even if you write about me, it will reflect on you; everything is a kind of weird collaboration.

So when I write characters and situations and relationships, I try to sort of utilize what I know about the world, limited as it is, and what I hear from my friends and see with my relatives.

I think every writer will tell you that their characters are always partially themselves: who I am and what I've experienced. It's always there in part of my characters.

I try mainly to just focus on character and what my character's point of view is, with each person, and try to figure out story.

I've written original material before, where I've come up with the idea and the characters myself, and that's definitely very different to working with someone else's characters and stories.

I tend to come up with people more than situations - most of my books start with a character.