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Here’s the full text of the Writers’ Digest interview that was on the cover of last month’s issue:

YOU’VE SAID YOU LEARNED AT THE CLARION SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY WRITERS’ WORKSHOP HOW TO SIT DOWN AT THE KEYBOARD AND “OPEN A VEIN.” HOW DID THAT CHANGE YOUR WRITING?

That’s a variation on a famous old writing aphorism, something like: “Writing is easy—all you have to do is sit down at your typewriter and open a vein.” I was 21 when I went to Clarion. Before, when I would sit down at a keyboard, I would feel “the magic”—that feeling that you’re putting down words that are entertaining and witty and sometimes very vivid. I would feel the cleverness—that feeling you get if you happen to be the guy who tells the funniest joke in the room at the lull in the conversation. Everybody laughs and for a moment you kind of bask in their adulation.

But what I didn’t feel was that kind of heart-tugging feeling—that feeling you get when you’re in dangerous territory. The feeling I had before was the feeling of having successfully told a joke; the feeling I try to get now is that feeling you get just before you try the joke, when you don’t know if it will succeed. That feeling of trepidation, of being slightly out of control, of taking a risk, of not knowing whether you are going to crash and burn—that feeling.