My mode as a writer is to layer different perspectives: the scientific, the philosophical, the political, the journalistic. When you layer them, you get a really wholesome, interesting picture.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I realized I couldn't be a journalist because I like to take a side, to have an opinion and a point a view; I liked to step across the imaginary boundary of the objective view that the journalist is supposed to have and be involved.
I don't intend to write the same kind of book for the rest of my life because I feel I would not be satisfied only writing in one mode.
My journalist sensibilities have guided me toward the types of projects I've gone for, even though the projects have been fairly diverse. It always has to have that interesting to attract me, I think.
I feel I'm functioning at some level as a journalist because even though I write fiction, I'm trying to get the world accurate.
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're a writer, you just keep following the path - keep going deeper and deeper into the things that interest you.
As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren't so different.
When I'm not writing, I do a lot of research reading on the shape of civilization. Fiction can be a lot of different things... but I feel like it's my job to write about the way things are.
I think that part of being a good journalist, part of being an awake member of the world you're in, is to view yourself as an outsider, and I always have, to some degree.
I'm very involved in the writing on every level.
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