There is a type of writer that can happily bury themselves in the country and dig very deep, but I'm not like that.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live.
I don't want to bury anything in poetry.
The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela, where I couldn't find a place for myself, for years and years.
Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.
For me, writing a novel is more like digging a well than climbing a mountain - some heroic thing where I set out to conquer. I just sit quietly for a few years, and then it starts to become something.
I don't do all that well in the writerly world. I'm happier being outside the flow.
Well, I write in exile because I cannot return to my country, so I have no choice but to see myself as an exiled writer.
I don't know if I had ever found my place in the world until I fully committed to being a writer.
I really enjoy writing novels. It's like the ocean. You can just build a boat and take off.
I like to think of myself as an unmediated novelist - or perhaps a national novelist.