It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writing is, by its nature, interior work. So being forced to be around people is a great gift for a novelist. You get to be reminded, daily, of how people think, how they speak, how they live; the things they worry about, the things they hope for, the things they fear.
There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
In some ways. I always feel between worlds, between cultures, and I think that's not necessarily a bad place for a writer to be. Writers are kind of on the fringe anyway, observing, writing things down. I'm still mostly American, but it's a nice tension.
For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.
Writing is a way of getting at the things most people would prefer to escape. Writing takes me to the center of life. That's my invitation to my readers as well.
I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity.
I think that writers are, at best, outsiders to the society they inhabit. They have a kind of detachment, or try to have.
It's true that your environment influences how you write.
My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.
I think writers tend to be experience junkies, and I think they also tend to want to be on the outside looking in.