"He listens to music when he writes – really loud music, same song over and over again, usually one song per story. He drinks insane amounts of Starbucks iced tea while on deadline. He has a surfboard, and when he’s on deadline he loads his surfboard into our minivan – which basically means that nobody else in our family, which includes three kids and a dog, can fit in the minivan – and keeps it there, not because he’s going to actually manage to go surfing but it serves as some very oversized talisman that tells him someday he’ll get his story done and feel free again. He is obsessive and brutally hard on himself. He frets and fusses and procrastinates and complains and then eventually, usually two or three clicks past the 11th hour, will suddenly disappear. It’s like the lights go off. All noise stops. Even if he’s home, he’s not really there. The next time I see him – a day later, two days later – he’s got his story. It’s actually a pretty wild thing to watch. Because when he gets it, it’s beautiful."