I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I write in a very peculiar way. I think about a book for 25 or 30 years in a kind of inchoate way, and at one point or another, I realize the book is ready to be written. I usually have a character, a first line, and general idea of what the book is going to be about.
It's true that I have spoken about doing a book before, but then everyone you speak to is planning to write a book.
Every book is like starting over again. I've written books every way possible - from using tight outlines to writing from the seat of my pants. Both ways work.
I think when you first start out, you're writing books that are about your immediate place.
My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It's just a matter of joining the dots.
Writing a book for me, I expect, is very similar to the experience of reading the book for my readers.
I really don't know what I am going to do in terms of what a book is going to be about until I actually start writing it!
Usually, a number of events will be going on around me to start me on a book. What I mean is, I will have read a poem or seen a picture that is lingering in my mind.
When a book is going well, it tells you where to go.
Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.