My creative workday starts with strong breakfast tea and a few minutes of journaling, both of which help me get my head in the story. So much of story-building for me involves immersing myself in the character and situation I'll be working on, just the way an actor does when playing a role.

It's 2010. I'm forty-three years old. I've just turned in the final draft of what will be my third novel when I decide I want a tattoo. Maybe it's a middle-age thing. Or maybe now that my kids are nearly grown and I have a career in place, I'm finally coming into my own.

My husband and I have, in some ways, a non-traditional relationship - especially when it comes to domestic duties. He does most of the cooking, dishes, and laundry, while I do most of the yard work. I love to mow the lawn! And I take great satisfaction in planting and pruning.

No writing effort is ever wasted. At the very least, it's practice, and a writer never knows when he or she might usefully cannibalize an earlier effort for something new.

Inclusion and transparency have been mainstays of my leadership. It's about education and reaching out.

I've had students at Yale: my main task with them in drama school was not helping them with their writing but showing them how valuable they were. Because they're ready to give it up and go into teaching or television.

Teaching is a distraction and a burden, but it's also an incredible stimulus. And a reprieve, in a way. When you're trying to work on something and it's not going anywhere, you can go to school and there's a two-and-a-half-hour block of time in which you can accomplish something.

By making college unaffordable and student loans unbearable, we risk deterring our best and brightest from pursuing higher education and securing a good-paying job.