Novel-writing is, for the novelist, a game of let's pretend.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When you are a novelist, you are used to making a narrative do what you want.
Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.
Novel writing is solitary work.
To make it interesting and worth doing, writing a novel has to be a leap into the unknown. I have to be unsure if I can write it; otherwise, I won't want to.
For me, writing a novel is like solving a puzzle. But I don't intend my novels as puzzles. I intend them as invitations to dance.
It's perceived as an accolade to be published as a 'literary' writer, but, actually, it's pompous and it's fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself.
To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.
Fiction novels, that's my game.
I'm a novelist: I spend a great part of my day pretending to myself that I'm in a different world, being a different person, faced with decisions I pretend I haven't created.
Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway.