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A story is built on characters and reasons.
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Being with a small publisher has been huge. They bat for me for everything.
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I could imagine that a character could do almost anything at any time, and that was the freedom of the whole thing. But keeping track of what was plausible for certain characters was the challenge.
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Fiction demands structures and recognizable shapes. Big surprises only draw attention to the writer's hand.
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I'm never going to write a whole paragraph describing what a living room looks like.
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I used to do jacket design, and I'm very conscious of covers, and probably meddle more than other authors would.
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I've always thought flight was fun and wanted to write about flight, and I knew a lot of househusbands who were having a really bad time with it. I thought flight might perk up a marriage here or there.
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Nursing demands vigilance about people. The sights and smells that a patient offers, their movements and their offhand comments all contribute crucial information to understanding what they need. Training and experience heighten one's ability to see what needs to be seen.