Novelists are no more moral or certain than anybody else; we are ideologically adrift, and if we are any good then our writing will live in several places at once. That is both our curse and our charm.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think a novelist must be more tender with living or 'real' people. The moral imperative of having been entrusted with their story looms before you every day, in every sentence.
There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage, I think, that lead us from an innocent world of contentment, drunkenness, and good humor, to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.
Novelists seem to fall into two distinct categories - those that plan and those that just see where it takes them. I am very much the former category.
I think that novels are tools of thought. They are moral philosophy with the theory left out, with just the examples of the moral situations left standing.
Writing is, by its nature, interior work. So being forced to be around people is a great gift for a novelist. You get to be reminded, daily, of how people think, how they speak, how they live; the things they worry about, the things they hope for, the things they fear.
I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.
Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be.
God gets the great stories. Novelists must make do with more mundane fictions.
Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.