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I come to writing the same way I come to teaching, which is that my goal is always to create life-long readers.

I grew up in a household that had its roots in church and community and culture and poetry and song and in the arts. Those aspects certainly shaped what I do.

My mom is a teacher, my dad was a writer for television, his dad was a writer for television, and combining those two has been sort of the goal of my life.

My writing process is a mix of research, personal experiences, washing the dishes, raising kids while thinking - then writing.

I always treated writing as a profession, never as a hobby. If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will.

I can't very well be teaching one way and living my life another way. What I do in life must be consistent with the things I say. And the same goes for you.

But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.

The core of my career is my teaching and my writing.

I get a little myopic in the act of doing any writing. I think I'm not as interested or not as able to write about balance, because I think there's something I want to try to get at. I'm trying to get at something about the experience of growing up or about families.