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I like to think I put some of myself in every character.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm a character being written, or if I'm writing myself.

And when I'm writing, I write a lot anyway. I might write pages and pages of conversation between characters that don't necessarily end up in the book, or in the story I'm working on, because they're simply my way of getting to know the characters.

I tend to write one character at a time. But I don't write the entirety of one character at a time.

I write easily, let's put it that way. And in a novel particularly, the characters take over. And they tell me what to say and they tell me what they're doing. And I'm a third of the way into a novel and then I just let the characters finish it for me.

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

For the most part, there's so much of me in my characters.

When I write, I just let my characters go, the way I let life go.

I guess that in a lot of ways, my writing is more of a character to me than something that I feel personally attached to.

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit.