Writing a book for me, I expect, is very similar to the experience of reading the book for my readers.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My shorthand answer is that I try to write the kind of book that I would like to read. If I can make it clear and interesting and compelling to me, then I hope maybe it will be for the reader.
After a while, you start to realize that you should write a book you would want to read. I try to write a book I would enjoy.
I write in a very peculiar way. I think about a book for 25 or 30 years in a kind of inchoate way, and at one point or another, I realize the book is ready to be written. I usually have a character, a first line, and general idea of what the book is going to be about.
I just write the sort of book that I would enjoy reading myself, a book that is both scholarly and recreates the experience of people at that time.
The experience of reading a book is always unique. I believe that you render a version of the story, when you read a book, in a way that is unique and special to each person who reads it.
Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.
I always say that, for me, writing a book is like a wacky Greyhound bus trip - I know where I'm starting and where I'll end up, but I have no idea what will happen along the way.
It's true that I have spoken about doing a book before, but then everyone you speak to is planning to write a book.
The act of writing... is the act of trying to understand why my opinion is what it is. And ultimately, I think that's the same experience the reader has when they pick up one of my books.
A book is a journey: It's a thing you agree to go on with somebody, and I think every reader's experience of a book is going to be different.