The first thing I tell my students when they ask me — well, anyone who asks me what do you say to an aspiring writer, I said, “I have six words of advice, and I have eight words of advice. The six words of advice are read, read, read, write, write, write, and the eight words of advice is read, read, read, read, write, write, write, write.” I said you have to read in order to be a writer. Oh, I have students who — I teach creative writing at the university there, advanced creative writing, and I have students who write a draft, and they think they need an agent already, and I tell them, “No. It doesn’t work that way.” I graduated in ’57 from San Francisco State, and I gave myself 10 years to prove that I could do it, and it was exactly what I — my first book was published seven years later in ’64. That would be Catherine Carmier, but hardly anybody read the book. I think 3,500 copies were printed, and 2,500 copies were sold. Then I went back to writing short stories, my Bloodline stories. I sent that to Dial, but my editor told me that he could not publish the stories by an unknown writer. I said, “But those stories will make me famous.” He said, “Well, you’re not famous yet. You have to get that novel out.” So I decided to write a novel for him, and the novel was published in 1967, Of Love and Dust, and it was from that book I began to get recognition by the critics and others.