The word 'novel' carries, for me, a weight as ominous, all-consuming and unforgiving as any Job encountered.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I found some time ago that I have to be careful, while working on a novel, what I read.
For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.
Fiction is burdened for me with a sense of duty.
You're more likely to finish a book you enjoy, than one that feels like literary drudgery.
Fiction is the thing I esteem most in my own work; I feel that, even if it's no good, only I could have written those books.
I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself.
A novel is a great act of passion and intellect, carpentry and largess. From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.
What fascinates me as a writer is the stuff underneath, To me, what drives a novel is the curiosity behind the character and the depths that you want to find in that character.
For me, writing a novel is more like digging a well than climbing a mountain - some heroic thing where I set out to conquer. I just sit quietly for a few years, and then it starts to become something.
Sometime early in life, I developed the notion - one which I have never relinquished - that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do.