I wish I was the kind of writer who would go to a war zone and write about something that's meaningful and important to people, but that's not my area of coverage.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I always wrote - not about war, necessarily, but I always wrote stories. I tried to write while I was in Iraq. It's not really - I didn't do a very good job, and not about war.
To be a good reporter, writing about war, you have to write about the people. It's not about the tanks or the RPGs or military strategy. It's always about the effect war has on civilians, on society, and how it disrupts and destroys lives.
Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.
I'm not one of those true writers who can't bear not to be writing. Yet it's one of the most important things in my life.
I'm an efficient, good, professional reporter. But I also write. And so what I try to do is write about places that I know that I care about intensely and write about them in a way that conveys the fact that I care.
If you wish to be a writer, write.
I don't think I'd call myself a war writer, but I would probably say I'm a writer who has written about war.
I write as well as I can. I'm a journalist at heart, so it's the story that matters.
I like writing about big turning points, where professional and personal lives coalesce, where the boundaries are coming down, and you're faced with a set of choices which will change life forever.
What ultimately happened is that my country had a war. I think it would be extraordinary, as a writer, not to want to write about that.