There's a theme in much of your work about wanting to be good at something. In "Iron and Silk" you confess this desire to one of your Chinese friends. But in some way Sister John is struggling with the same desire -- in some sense she wants to be good at her calling: to be totally unselfish. Yet ironically, this is also a selfish desire in some way -- or at least she suspects it is. Do you think the desire, say, to be good at martial arts is roughly equivalent to her spiritual ambitions?

A better comparison would be my early interest in Zen Buddhism -- and the idea of becoming enlightened. I thought it would make me datable. You want something that's really transcendent but you also want something for yourself and it's sort of a contradiction. The same is true of wanting to become holy --

I do think that's a universal problem with reaching for an ideal. You feel called to move toward it and you reach for it but fall short. What's the point? It's a recurring theme and one of the great challenges we all face being idealists and having to be realistic. And yet you've got to move on, you've got to have some kind of faith.

Talk a little about how you struggled to write this book. Did you ever grow bored with the subject matter?

By the third year, I became really confused -- I had to wear a tin-foil skirt to keep the cats off my lap and a towel on my head. Oh, it was just terrible. Now it's a good story, but my wife would be the first to say it was not fun at all. My confidence was destroyed. I wanted to give up but I couldn't. I'd invested so much in it already. I was putting her through hell. So I started again from scratch.

I decided to give up on the nun and neurologist being attracted to each other -- I threw that away and at the end of that draft, I thought, this is really good. I passed my test. So I sent it off to the agent and she said, "I missed the doctor." I went back and read it and it was bad -- she thought the problem was that I'd gotten rid of the doctor but it was that it had no real life to it. I hadn't figured out what my root of it was.

That's when it occurred to me: What have I dedicated my life to? What reason do I have to dedicate my life to art? No rational reason. So I started again.

In the end it was "easy," but after years of anguish. Did you learn anything about the futility or worthiness of "trying"?

I haven't learned anything. I'm writing a new book and really feel like [I'm] stumbling around blind. The only thing is I created a deeper reservoir of confidence. I can say: I've been here before -- don't give up. I've added to the evidence I have that when I stick to something I can make it work. And I think that's the most precious currency that writers have.

You've had a tremendous response to this book. Sister John would have been very fearful that such worldly accolades would infect the purity of her pursuits. Do you ever feel worried that your growing fame affects your creativity?

None at all -- it feels so damn good. I can imagine how there are ways success can hurt a person, if they're young. But if you've paid your dues and you get praise, then I don't see how it hurts. I'm enjoying it -- that's all I can tell you.

What are you working on now?

I'm working on a nonfiction book about teaching creative writing in juvenile hall for kids about 15 to 17, who are waiting to be tried as adults and now they're waiting to be sentenced. Most of them are charged with murder and come from the most chaotic and tragic backgrounds.

I fell into it by accident -- a friend of mine had invited me to his class so they could meet another writer and I just dreaded it. I thought, What could be more depressing? And I went down there and they were so unlike what I had imagined. They were so clearly hungry for people to take interest in them.

They had all prepared a little essay to read to me and their hands were shaking, and seeing the looks on their faces when I responded to what they had written ... The writing was amazing. So I decided to volunteer to teach my own class.

My dad was a social worker and he said do anything but don't be a social worker, it'll break your heart. So I'd always stayed away from stuff like that. Of course, there's a very serious side to it -- these kids don't have much of a future and they've killed people in some cases. These are kids who are so poorly socialized, most of them are addicted to drugs and they've been so abused by adults. And yet what we do in that class is so uplifting, I find it the opposite of depressing.

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