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I wasted time writing films. I don't look back on those years as lost, but it wasn't what I should have been doing.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

I was directed because I knew I wanted to be a novelist, but I didn't have a very good job or a way of getting published. I found those years to be among the most difficult of my life.

I went to film school, worked as an assistant, and wrote several scripts that haven't gotten made.

I began writing fiction when I started running out of material in my own life.

I always assumed I could never make a living out of literary fiction, and I was right. When I did try, it took four years before being published.

And I discovered after a couple years that I really didn't miss making movies.