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For all its ups and downs and challenges, I love writing. We only grow through adversity, so I welcome the difficulties, knowing bumps in the road are my greatest teachers.

I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.

I hate writing. I almost never write. I write against deadlines. And when I'm teaching, I'm focused on that.

Before I sat down and became a writer, before I began to do it habitually and for my living, there was a decades-long stretch when I was terrified that it would suck, so I didn't write. I think that marks a lot of people, a real terror at being bad at something, and unfortunately, you are always bad before you can get a little better.

I tried writing fiction as a little kid, but had a teacher humiliate me, so didn't write again until I was a senior in college.

Frankly, I have always dreaded writing - there always seemed to be pain involved, unpleasant self-examination and a lot of fear.

What I've become convinced makes a writer are the days you hate it, the days you'd rather stick those pencils in your eyes. Sometimes I almost punish myself - if I'm not going be able to write, I'm not going be able to do anything else. I just sit there and wait.

I had been encouraged a lot by my parents and my sixth grade teacher, James Doyle at Main Street Elementary School. He was an early supporter of my writing ability.

I had a number of teachers who hated me. I didn't do well in school.