I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When you're writing non-fiction, you go as far as you can go, and then ethically you have to stop. You can't go. You can't suppose. You can't imagine. And I think there's something in human nature that wants to finish the story.
Being able to write creatively or read creative fiction is the best way to exercise your imagination.
That's why I love being a writer. My imagination can take me places I may never see except in my mind's eye.
I always worried that the creative well would dry up. I was sure that if I wrote a book a year, I would eventually run out of ideas. Actually, the opposite has been true for me. The more I write, the more ideas come to me and it gets easier.
My work as a screenwriter has influenced my fiction. Writing screenplays forces you to consider many elements regarding story structure and other narrative devices that can be used to enhance the infinitely more complex demands of a novel.
I always assumed I could never make a living out of literary fiction, and I was right. When I did try, it took four years before being published.
Part of being a fiction writer is being able to imagine how someone else is thinking and feeling. I think I've always been good at that.
I didn't know how to write a novel, so I sort of let it happen in waves. The only way I could write it was to think like scenes in a movie.
I suppose I have an active imagination, and writing allows me to live it out.
I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life.