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I treated the first few books as a very long journalistic exercise. I thought of every chapter as an article that needed to be finished.

Another thing that's quite different in writing a book as a practicing newspaperman is that if you look at what you've written the next morning and you think you didn't get it quite right, you can fix it.

To me there's no difference between a book of stories and a novel - they're just slightly different shapes.

When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.

Editors are more concerned with the first chapters of a book; that's what everyone reads first in the bookstore or in the online sample.

A good part of the work is just reading a manuscript and coming to the office. I can't imagine wanting to even read an article about book publishing.

Publishing in a way doesn't have a lot to do with writing, and writing doesn't have a lot to do with publishing.

The newspaper is, in fact, very bad for one's prose style. That's why I gravitated towards feature stories where you get a little more leeway in the writing style.

I've never really thought of writing books. I've never thought about stories as a part of a collection.

It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.