I believe, in a funny way, the job of the novelist is to be out there on the fringes and speaking for an experience that has not really been spoken for.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'm a great believer in the novelist being 'on the scene,' reporting, traveling, meeting all sorts of people.
Novelists seem to fall into two distinct categories - those that plan and those that just see where it takes them. I am very much the former category.
I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.
As a writer, it's a great narrative tool to have that character who is slightly detached but at the same time observant of his reality, because I think that's pretty much what being a writer is - being there, watching and internalizing.
I felt like I haven't had the typical experience of a novelist whose book becomes a movie.
The idea that we should write towards the unknown aspects of our experience was totally groundbreaking for me. It gave me the license I needed to try to write outside myself. This attitude has deeply informed my approach to fiction, emboldening me to write characters with voices or situations that are vastly different from my own.
However far fiction writers stray from their own lives and experiences - and I stray pretty far from mine - I think, ultimately, that we may be writing what we need to write in some way, albeit unconsciously.
Writers do well to carefully attend to those moments of inspiration, because chances are that they're writing from a very deep place. The subsequent search that ensues to continually attend to that voice that you hear is what is going to give the story drive.
Things happen to all of us. The writer's job is to get you interested.
I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.
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