Sometimes you make a connection with a writer or a piece of material, and there's not much to ask.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I can see how a relationship with a writer would be an easy thing.
When I'm identified as a fiction writer at parties, the question comes pretty quickly. 'Did you go to school for it?' someone asks. 'Yes,' I say. 'Where?' they ask, because I don't usually offer it. 'I went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop,' I say.
As a writer, you rely on whatever makes you up as a person, whether those things are twisted and nasty or otherwise.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm a character being written, or if I'm writing myself.
When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.
When people ask what I write about, that's what I tell them: 'The drama of human relationships.' I'm not even close to running out of material.
A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.
I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?'
I've discovered just how symbiotic the relationship is between writers, directors and actors. They ask the same questions and strip down texts in exactly the same way.
In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.