I was the daughter of an immigrant, raised to feel that I needed to get excellent, flawless grades and a full scholarship and a graduate degree and a good job - all the stepping stones to conventional success.
All sorts of creative communities are withering in New York because it's too hard to live here. It's ridiculous how expensive it is.
I always try to avoid looking at the section where my books would be shelved, but I do know that my most reliable neighbor to the right is Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening', which is dispiriting. That's a book I don't want to re-read.
I've never written a book with an outline or a predetermined theme. It's only in retrospect that themes or subjects become identifiable. That's the fun of it: discovering what's next. I'm often surprised by plot developments I would not have dreamed of starting out, but that, in the course of the writing, come to seem inevitable.
