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I think every writer has got to direct. If you don't direct, you can't protect your work. The only way to ensure that it's going to be as close as possible to what you put down on paper - and what you see and hear in your head - is to do it yourself.

That is the thing about being a writer; your subject matter may not stay your subject matter if you break their trust by revealing personal and editorialized information about them.

A writer is supposed to have anonymity.

I have to understand what my strengths and limitations are, and work from a true place. I try to do this as best I can while still protecting my writer self, which more than ever needs privacy.

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

I had a blog where I tried to be transparent while giving away nothing. I tweeted and Facebooked badly. As a writer, your 'voice' is your calling card, yet my voice was becoming indistinguishable from billions of other voices.

You know when you're writing, and it's just you and the computer screen, and you never think that anyone is ever going to read it... you're able to say private things when you're writing.

A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with it. A secret, because he is separated from it.

When you sit down to write, you have to be prepared to strip all of those voices away, all of the censors away, and talk about what you think the truth is, which I think is really the task of the writer - to get to the truth.

For me, writing isn't a way of being public or private; it's just a way of being. The process is always full of pain, but I like that. It's a reality, and I just accept it as something not to be avoided.