Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

I definitely don't sit down every day and make a new song.

Capote wrote every day. He said that's the only way, you have to sit down every day and do it.

Every day you waste is one you can never make up.

Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.

I'm a Virgo and I'm really good at scheduling. And I really make it work. I get up 6.30 every day.