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Jodi Picoult: You Can't Edit a Blank Page

Jodi Picoult is the author of 13 novels. Her most recent, The Tenth Circle, debuted at two on the New York Times bestseller list. She was born and raised on Long Island, studied creative writing at Princeton and currently lives in Hanover, New Hampshire with her husband, three children and a donkey named Hote (Don Quixote!)

How She Writes: "I get up at 5:00 AM, walk three miles with girlfriends, come back and get the kids ready for school. When they leave, I pull up whatever file I was working on yesterday, edit my way through, and then keep going wherever I left off. I continue till about 3:15 PM, when I magically turn into a mom again."

Fights Writer's Block: "I don't. Writer's block is for people who have the luxury of time; I started writing when I had three kids under the age of 4. I used to write every ten minutes I got to sit in front of a computer. Now, when I have more time, I function the same way: if it's writing time, I write. I may write garbage, but you can always edit garbage. You can't edit a blank page.

A Favorite Sentence:"Ross Wakeman succeeded the first time he killed himself, but not the second or the third."

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Melody Joy Kramer
Marc Silver
Marc Silver, who edits NPR's global health blog, has been a reporter and editor for the Baltimore Jewish Times, U.S. News & World Report and National Geographic. He is the author of Breast Cancer Husband: How to Help Your Wife (and Yourself) During Diagnosis, Treatment and Beyond and co-author, with his daughter, Maya Silver, of My Parent Has Cancer and It Really Sucks: Real-Life Advice From Real-Life Teens. The NPR story he co-wrote with Rebecca Davis and Viola Kosome -- 'No Sex For Fish' — won a Sigma Delta Chi award for online reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists.