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I became a writer in spite of my environments.

I wasn't always a novelist. I began my writing career as a journalist, working on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney, Australia, doing the crime beat and court reporting. Having grown up in a small country town, I felt as though I had nothing to write about.

I started writing after college, slowly, secretly writing.

I don't know if I had ever found my place in the world until I fully committed to being a writer.

I came to write after several mini careers. I did live theatre, managed a cosmetics store and was a local television personality.

I've carved out a career for myself really as a writer.

Writing was my first occupation, begun at age 23.

I had started writing as a poet in a closed, post-Revival, claustrophobic world, where the shadows of the national upheaval and the intense effort - the intense self-conscious effort - to make a literary movement were still evident. Now we lived a life as writers that was more cosmopolitan, more open, that had more travel and exchange.

Before I began concentrating on writing, in my free time I was an artist, making and selling etchings illustrating stories based on my readings in classical literature.