“What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First there's the vinegar-lipped Reader Lady, who says primly, "Well, that's not very interesting, is it?" And there's the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there's William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as bold and articulate as a houseplant; and so on. And there are also the dogs: let's not forget the dogs, the dogs in their pen who will surely hurtle and snarl their way out if you ever stop writing, because writing is, for some of us, the latch that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained.”

“You can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder. They are probably the ones who told you not to open that door in the first place. You can tell if you they're there because a small voice will say, 'Oh, whoops, don't say that, that's a secret,' or 'That's a bad work,' or 'Don't tell anyone you jack off. They'll all start doing it.' So you have to breathe or pray or do therapy to send them away. Write as if your parents are dead.”

“There are a number of things a woman can tell about a man who is roughly twenty-nine years old,sitting in the cab of a pickup truck at 3:37 in the afternoon on a weekday, facing the Pacific,writing furiously on the back of pink invoice slips. Such a man may or may not be employed, butregardless, there is mystery there. If this man is with a dog, then that's good, because it means he'scapable of forming relationships. But if the dog is a male dog, that's probably a bad sign, becauseit means the guy is likely a dog, too. A girl dog is much better, but if the guy is over thirty, anykind of dog is a bad sign regardless, because it means he's stopped trusting humans altogether. Ingeneral, if nothing else, guys my age with dogs are going to be work.Then there's stubble: stubble indicates a possible drinker, but if he's driving a van or a pickuptruck, he hasn't hit bottom yet, so watch out, honey. A guy writing something on a clipboardwhile facing the ocean at 3:37 P.M. may be writing poetry, or he may be writing a letter beggingsomeone for forgiveness. But if he's writing real words, not just a job estimate or somethingbusiness-y, then more likely than not this guy has something emotional going on, which couldmean he has a soul.”

“A writer who does not write is a deplorable thing, like an emaciated dog lost from home.”

“Senior year. And then life. Maybe that's the way it worked. High school was just a prologue to the real novel. Everybody got to write you -- but when you graduated, you got to write yourself. At graduation you got to collect your teacher's pens and your parents' pens and you got your own pen. And you could do all the writing. Yeah. Wouldn't that be sweet?”

“First, consider the pen you write with. It should be a fast-writing pen because your thoughts are always much faster than your hand. You don't want to slow up your hand even more with a slow pen. A ballpoint, a pencil, a felt tip, for sure, are slow. Go to a stationery store and see what feels good to you. Try out different kinds. Don't get too fancy and expensive. I mostly use a cheap Sheaffer fountain pen, about $1.95.... You want to be able to feel the connection and texture of the pen on paper.”