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My mind has become somewhat like a book. What I mean by that is that when I look at the world, I see it as a story.

I have realised just how important it is to readers to feel that fictional stories are based on reality.

Having spent so much time in a fictional world, I prefer to read about the real world.

Once the world has been created, the fantasy author still has to bring the story's characters to life and unfold a gripping plot. That's why good fantasy is such a hard act to bring off.

There's a problem with narratives. Most that spring to mind are fictional.

One reason we love fiction is because stories have a comforting shape. They provide a resolution that's lacking in our regular lives.

The writing life is one long, never-ending search for narrative. Well, it's not even a conscious searching. It happens even while you're busy buying groceries and when you're fast asleep. It's a curse.

The stories are there first, and they come from my experiences wandering around in the world. They will resonate into bigger things, forces sweeping the planet, themes and archetypes, but I'm not smart enough to have lucid integration of all that in my head as I'm writing.

Fiction connects: past and present; the great and the small; the surface with the depths. Fiction brings out the innermost, invisible springs of life that cannot be revealed in factual narratives.

Each story presents a mystery that has to be solved in the process of writing. When I'm at work on a story, I'm completely immersed in that world and in the lives of those characters; they're utterly real to me. Then, when I've completed the story, it all just falls away. The whole compulsion to understand is over.