The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.
My fear is you have to be careful as a writer to not get caught up in social media and blogging, because it can start to feed into your writing time. When you are writing a book, it's such a long journey where the payoff is way at the end, sometimes years away. The payoff of the blog post is today. You get the reinforcement, comments or "likes" immediately. It's appealing. You have to be patient with the book.
I want to get good enough so I can play in Mia Hamm's golf tournament for her foundation and have an event of my own someday. I'm so competitive, I don't want to go and just pretend I'm a good golfer.
Fall is my favorite my time of the year. I love it. I'll try and make it back to Vancouver a bunch. I love going back home for that. Everything turns orange. You start to get out of summer, start making your way into the winter, everyone is wearing jackets. Vancouver lights up in the fall, so I definitely go back there for a bit.
I have no choice in what direction my music goes, honestly, as all I get is what I'm given. I start writing the songs, and they start presenting themselves the way they want to be heard.
It's like you're a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say, 'I'm sorry, but this role isn't right for me'. And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing.
You've got to be a good reader. So whatever genre that you're interested in, read a lot of books about it and it's better than any kind of writing class you'll ever take. You will absorb techniques and then in a lot of cases you can just start writing using the style of the book or the author that you admire and then your own style will emerge out of that. Be a diligent reader and then try to write seriously, professionally and approach everything in writing in a professional way.
Writing is such a strangely and radically private act, and yet its purpose is this great sense of connection and community. I mean, I wanted people to love the book. And the only way to get them to love it is to try to make it good for them. So of course the audience has to be considered.
When you are in the midst of writing a book, I think it is important to touch base every day. If I wasn't writing something, I would be reading back what I'd already written. I did take a month off writing at one point and found it really difficult to get back into the world I'd created.
Sure, I'm competitive and I want to do well and I've put pressure on myself - I think anybody who is competitive and wants to try to get better is going to be that way. We're just trying to improve and get better.
Freedom is the freedom you choose, when you're not getting in your own way. The best way to start every day is to wake up and wash your face and look yourself in the mirror, right in the eyes of your reflection, and say, "don't get in my way." Because it's only when we get in our own way that we have to step back or step aside or step over here and not walk at all.
The trouble with calling a book a novel, well, it's not like I'm writing the same book all the time, but there is a continuity of my interests, so when I start writing a book, if I call it 'a novel,' it separates it from other books.
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
I was 12 and read my first romance novel; it was a sweeping desert saga, and I got to the end of it and was like, 'I want to go back and start all over again!' That emotional response to the book and getting to the end of a story you love is what inspires me to write the next book.
Writing a book set in New Mexico was partially a way to express my own love for the state, and partially a way to prudently follow the advice to write what you know.
From the start, I held the pick in an unusual way. I used to bend my thumb way back in order to get a good angle for fast playing. I played that way for 10 years.