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I pay a lot more attention to the message I'm trying to get across now than I did when

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I was younger.

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When I was younger, it was a matter of the story.

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You know, I wanted to get that story down as fast as I could and the best way I could

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and then go back and start the rewrites.

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And it was on the rewrites that I really started seeing the shape of the story, of the characters

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and everything.

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I would get to a scene and I would have a character do something.

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I would go, by this time I know this character wouldn't do that.

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It's against his, you know, what he would do.

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Heraclitus said character is destiny and there has to be, for a book, for a novel particularly,

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to be successful, there has to be an inevitability about it, both in terms of the plot and the

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fact that the characters in the story would have done this in the plot.

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You have to believe it, in other words.

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One of the greatest compliments you can pay a novelist is to say it's true.

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You know, I read your book and it's true.

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You know, that's what you're always going for.