My creative process is like...

Herding cats, basically.
I'm averaging a book every five to six months, which feels like forever.

I really try to write faster because I have so many stories crowding around in my brain, waiting to be told.
It's just that for me to write a book of the quality that I'll be happy with, it needs multiple drafts, and while I'm writing those drafts, new characters pop up and take on lives of their own and develop crushes on each other and run off and get married. Villains became allies. Allies are secretly villains.

While I'm in the middle of all this it feels like I'm writing absolute drek and I'll never create anything good again. At this point I often go back to my published books and read a few chapters and think, hmm, I actually like what I've written. I may not be the worst writer in history, after all.

But after enough rewrites I finally get to the point where I'm really, genuinely happy with what I've written. Then, and only then, do I publish.

And that is how I write. And that's why it takes me so long.

Thank you for attending my TED talk.