I set out to write a screenplay but, since my early 20s, had dreamed of writing a novel.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.
I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn't think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.
My dream was, and always had been, to write a book. To be a writer.
I started writing screenplays myself and eventually directing.
When I was in my early 20s, my dream was to write mystery novels. I wanted to do what my favourite crime writer, Ross Macdonald, did - crank out a book a year. The only problem - and it was a considerable one - was that I stank.
I wanted to be a writer, but the idea of writing novels or movies seemed really intimidating. I never got more than a few pages into one.
I just really loved films and thought I should be writing screenplays.
I really started considering myself a writer when I was about seven or eight years old. I wrote stories from my dreams and kept them all in a notebook that I still have.
I never even dreamt of being a writer because I didn't feel allowed. When I was a child I was terribly ambitious, but I didn't know at all what this great thing would become.
Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.