'Oscar Wao' for example cohered in a period of terrible distress. All the novels that I wanted to write were not happening.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writers have been in terrible situations and have yet managed to produce extraordinary work.
Early on, I tried fiction, but I wasn't very good at it. I wrote a very bad novel that is thankfully sitting in a drawer somewhere.
That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.
I felt like I haven't had the typical experience of a novelist whose book becomes a movie.
I write the kinds of novels I like to read, where the setting is rendered with love and care.
Writing fiction was a way to take the ideas that troubled me or confused me and put them under pressure.
After these three novels I gave up writing novels for a time; I was dissatisfied with romantic doom, yet didn't see much way around it.
I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters.
I had novels to write, so I wrote them.
I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels.