J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN

The hardest part about writing fiction is finding long stretches of time to do it: for me, this means writing mostly on Saturdays and Sundays. But I am always thinking about my characters, jotting down ideas in stolen moments and hoping I'll be able to make sense of them when the weekend rolls around.

For whatever reason, various outlets and individuals are committed to making the world think that young girls don't talk or care about feminism anymore, that it's totally over. But it's not.

I know a lot of women who embody what it means to be a feminist but do not want to use that word. The misperceptions about what it's all about have gotten into their heads.

Fiction will always be my greatest love, with poetry close behind.

Reading poetry gives me a sense of calm, well-being, and love for humanity - the same stuff more flexible women get from yoga.

I sometimes read on the subway, but I'm a hopeless eavesdropper and get easily distracted by strangers' conversations.

Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who feel fully real, who I find myself worrying about while I'm walking through the grocery store aisles a week later, that to me is as close to perfection as it gets.

When I was in fourth grade, a novelist came to talk to my English class. She told us that being an author meant sitting at the kitchen table in pajamas, drinking tea with the dogs at your feet.

In high school, during marathon phone conversations, cheap pizza dinners and long suburban car rides, I began to fall for boys because of who they actually were, or at least who I thought they might become.

I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker, no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden, no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats.

I love the smell of a man's skin.

I admire the linear and decisive way a certain kind of man thinks, to my curlicue boundless overthinking.

A glimpse at my night stand gives the mostly true impression that I am a book hoarder.

I like dressing up for dates and dissecting a dinner conversation with a new guy to determine if he might be The One.

As a little girl, my dollhouse allowed me to imagine a big, perfect, grown-up life in which I'd be effortlessly domestic.

When I was growing up, for example, everybody on our street was Irish. And all the girls did Irish step dancing. It was pre-Lord of the Dance - it was before anybody knew what gillys were - but we did, and there was such pride among the members of my family and people I grew up with.

Early on in the writing process, there is sometimes this temptation to write around the central drama instead of just aiming for the bull's-eye. The bullseye is harder to hit, of course, but it's so much more satisfying when you do.

Deep down, I have always been 72 years old. In college, my friends used to make fun of me because I would sometimes skip a Friday night party to stay in my dorm room watching Turner Classic Movies.

The first book I bought was 'Anne of Green Gables,' an edition that is beautiful and complete - one I hope to read with my son someday, seeing it anew through his eyes.

I am intrigued by the way secrets move through a family and how events and perceptions from decades earlier continue to influence the way relatives view each other. Homes shape family histories as well.

I call my mother every day for things: 'How long do you cook an egg for?' Or, 'Can you remind me of our dentist's phone number at home?'

For my seventh birthday, my parents gave me a plain, unfinished wooden dollhouse. It had six empty rooms, two floors, a staircase, and a door that swung out onto a little front stoop. The windows opened, and the roof retracted on one side, revealing an attic.

It's true of Irish Catholic families. They're big on story telling and big on saving stories from one generation to the next.

When I started writing my second novel, I decided that one of the characters would have a passion for dollhouses, which allowed me to do hours of guilt-free 'research' online and at the Manhattan Dollhouse boutique inside F. A. O. Schwarz.

When you write fiction, you're like a bird making a nest. You remember every little story ever told you. It's funny how things come back to you.