For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I have a lot of hobbies and I can be very remiss in reminding myself to go down to the basement to work.
For years I wrote in my basement. More recently I graduated to one floor above, an office with all my books and music and - ta da! - a window.
Most people who are trying to write kind of sit in their basements and pull it out of their imaginations.
I love books that give you space to climb inside there. And you have to run to keep up in places, and you have to fill in a lot of blanks yourself. So it almost becomes your story.
I don't like to have a calm, orderly, quiet place to work. I often compose while driving, compose in my head. It is true that I wrote my little book, 'The Sounds of Poetry, A Brief Guide,' almost entirely in airplanes and airport departure lounges.
If I'm hanging around too much, my wife and kids say, 'Hey, why don't you go downstairs and start a new novel?'
I'm really such a bumbler! Writing fiction is like arranging furniture in a dark room. I can't see what I'm doing. I grope for the right words. I bump against the wrong words and stumble and stub my toe and curse and keep trying to guess what belongs in the space.
For me writing is that place where I can escape; it's where I let my thoughts run wild.
I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building.
Creativity is a mansion. If you're empty in one room, all you have to do is go out into the hallway and enter another room that's full.