No book that is written for an external purpose is going to be a passionately felt book for the writer or the reader. I don't see the point in doing that.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters.
I think some people wished I'd kept myself out of the book. But I kind of insist on it because I want the reader to share my engagement with the material, if you like, not pretend that I'm doing it completely intellectually.
Books should have a purpose. Books should be practical in some sense.
When you write a novel, you never have to be in the service of the reader. My only concern with my books is that the world that's created be as logical and whole as possible.
Any time you can take a book a little beyond the realm of pure entertainment, I think it's a good thing. But I don't really have it on my to-do list when I write a book. It just evolves naturally during the process of immersing yourself in a subject.
Books can be a source of solace, but I see them mainly as a source of pleasure, personal as well as esthetic.
I think people get satisfaction from living for a cause that's greater than themselves. They want to leave an imprint. By writing books, I'm trying to do that in a modest way.
Finding people who get enormous pleasure from reading books is a more and more unusual experience, and so writers just so much want to be heard.
Any writer who gives a reader a pleasurable experience is doing every other writer a favor because it will make the reader want to read other books. I am all for it.
The whole purpose of writing a book is to be understood - if other people write about you, they try to guess why you did things, or they hear things from other people.