There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
The thing I love about being a novelist is that with each project, you invent a new world. You approach it with a different set of aesthetic and structural ideas, and you grapple with a different series of problems in figuring out how to tell the story. And yet there are certain concerns that stay constant.
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.
The main impetus for being a writer is thinking, 'I could invent another world. I'm not terribly keen on this one.'
The lovely thing about writing is, well, two things. One, writing fiction allows us to bring an order to our lives that doesn't exist in real life. And two, it allows us to create human characters that we know better than we will ever know anyone in real life.
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.
Writing is a solitary endeavor, but not a lonely one. When you write, your world is populated by the characters you invent, and you feel those people filling your life.
It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments.
Writing is a way of getting at the things most people would prefer to escape. Writing takes me to the center of life. That's my invitation to my readers as well.
Every novelist has a different purpose - and often several purposes which might even be contradictory.