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The characters I'm most emotionally involved with are like friends you leave behind when you move away. You don't see them regularly anymore, but you still love them and keep in touch.

I always spend a good deal of time with the people I write about. I try and smell the normalcy of their lives. I try to look at the normal rhythm of their life.

Part of me becomes the characters I'm writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.

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

As a writer, I absorb stories, allow them to churn within my own head and heart - often for years - until I find a way of telling them that fits both my time and temperament.

I write a lot about other people, like family and friends. I look at their lives and relationships and think, 'Well, if I was in your position, this is how I would see it.'

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.

My characters live inside my head for a long time before I actually start a book about them. Then, they become so real to me I talk about them at the dinner table as if they are real. Some people consider this weird. But my family understands.

I sometimes feel like it's difficult for people to relate to me, until they spend, like, a day with me, and until they walk around with me in public.