My Theory Of Characterization Is Basically This:

This Ravishing World. This Achingly Bittersweet, Ravishing World.

I Tend To Start At 9 O'clock In The Morning And Write Until 3. Those Are My Best Hours. They Fit The Other Rhythms Of The World. So I Write For Six Hours, Pretty Much Without Any Breaks.

One Of The Traps Or The Pitfalls Of Writing A Trilogy - Or A Triptych, Or Whatever Term You Want To Use - Is That The Second Book Can Be A Long Second Act To Get You From Book One To Book Three, Which Borrows All Of Its Energy From The First Book.

Writing Is A Job: You Must Show Up.

That Literary-popular Distinction Is, In My View, Vastly Overstated. At The Far Poles There Are Clearly Books That Are Purely Commercial And Purely Literary, Written For Audiences That Want To See The Same Thing Enacted Over And Over And Over Again. But The Middle Is Where Most People Read And Most People Write.