I set out to write a screenplay but, since my early 20s, had dreamed of writing a novel.
I started blogging a decade ago because I like blogging. Writing's a kind of lonely thing to do, and I liked the idea of demystifying the process because I loved it as a kid and teenager and as somebody who wanted desperately to write.
It is vitally important for me, both personally and for my writing, to be able to return to China freely, so being barred entry has caused me deep concern and distress.
I hate thinking about it, teaching about it, and writing about it. But the plain truth is that hell is real and real people go there for eternity.
They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
I was a sound engineer. That was my day job when I started writing.
I don't have any writing routine. Sometimes I go to my local coffee shop and I write there for some hours. Apart from that, I am traveling most of the time. I write in airports, trains, hotel rooms... I can write anywhere.
I've been interested in autism since I've known about it, which is more or less since I've been writing.
When you're writing, it's as if you're within a kind of closed world.
I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.
Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk.
Black people were very angry with me for writing the book. A lot of people didn't believe me, or didn't want to believe me, and that used to really bother me. It was a very painful and difficult time.
Character is character and voice is voice, which translates nicely from writing novels to writing TV. But the process is different. You have a writer's room, people pitch you jokes and you collaborate.
I'm writing a film. With our access to these powerful media, we're going to take over, because it's really disgusting what is put out there now to be consumed.
It's part of a cycle of stories I'm writing where I deconstruct classic science fiction.
I used to love 'Jeeves And Wooster.' That theme tune was great. I remember writing to them when I was little to get the music so I could learn it on the piano, and they sent me the sheet music.
Every time I flicked channels, there I was, talking. I was talking too much and writing too little. So Naomi and I went to Hawaii. The phone was cut off and we lost touch. This gave me the chance to have a good think about my life.
I'm not in it for the money. I like music. I love to write music. I can't imagine myself not playing or singing or writing. It would just drive me crazy if I didn't.
People think writing a children's book is something you could do in an afternoon but it's actually really hard.
Allowing alternative narrative modes in popular entertainment may seem obvious, yet when you turn a pilot into the people upstairs and the main character isn't after what she wants by the top of page two, you get treated as if you've failed at writing.
I studied in New York. I fell in love with an Australian-born, half-Filipina girl. So we moved to Australia when she went to her university and I moved with her. We moved to Montreal because she was going to take her year abroad, and I wanted to see if I could keep on writing there. It's really hard to make it as a writer in the Philippines.
A memoir is not an autobiography. It's a true story told as a novel, using techniques of novelization. The author is allowed to compress events, combine characters, change names, change the sequence of events, just as if he's writing a novel. But it's got to be true.
I've only ever taken a playwriting class, but I like creative writing and writing screenplays.
Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap.
I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!
When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'
I've always preferred writing about grey characters and human characters. Whether they are giants or elves or dwarves, or whatever they are, they're still human, and the human heart is still in conflict with the self.
I think it was the fact that I liked it so much that made the writing just come out of me automatically.
I'm just writing a story that I want to read.
I'm writing all the time. I want to do this forever. I want to have a box set someday. I can't stop. The day I stop being inspired to write songs, I'll go sit on the beach - until I become inspired again.
As a writer, as much as I try, I can't stop writing female characters. They have so much more to offer; they have to wear so many different hats. There's so much wonderful gray matter in a female's life that it just makes for a stronger character.
I write about people I think are interesting, and then I discuss it with my editor, and she decides if she thinks it will be interesting to children as well. If I have no great interest in the subject, I find the work to be terribly boring. And if I find the person interesting, I love the research part and, by extension, the writing as well.
Which, of course, isn't the point of writing - but it would be nice if, along with the creative satisfaction of writing and seeing my work in print, I could do more than merely scrape a living. Okay, moaning over.
The one thing a lifetime in the newspaper business teaches you is pace - you spend all your time trying to make sure that the reader's going to finish what you're writing.
You know, since the reviews have come out and people have reacted to it, I've realized that is in a sense what has happened. But as I was writing them, I didn't feel a part of any tradition. I think that would have been too overwhelming, in a sense.
At the beginning of my career as a writer, I felt I knew nothing of Chinese culture. I was writing about emotional confusion with my mother related to our different beliefs. Hers was based in family history, which I didn't know anything about. I always felt hesitant in talking about Chinese culture and American culture.
