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All writers I know are readers first and foremost, and that's why you become a writer.

The first job of a writer is to be honest.

Unfortunately, there's still a lot of beginning writers who think you can just write your first draft and hand it in.

A lot of first novels are coming-of-age stories. A lot are autobiographical.

One thing that writers have in common is that they are readers first. They have read lots and lots of stuff, because they're just infested with lots of stuff.

I don't know any writer for whom it comes easily. Maybe John Updike - a story would just seem to come to him whole, you know, out of a personal experience. But the rest of us, I think, are not so lucky, and I had to work hard, yeah.

I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.

I really absolutely loved writing my first book.

I started writing short fiction very briefly, as I imagine is the case for some novelists.