I'm never happy with what I've written. You imagine, before you start, there's a cathedral, and the moment it starts on the page, it's a garden shed. And then you just try to make it the best shed you can.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I love my shed. It's my space and my mess - and I know where everything is.
My new house has a deck that wraps around my writing room; my writing room has many windows, and outside the windows I've hung bird feeders... for enticing different species. So I imagine I will be writing about that.
The reason that I keep writing is that all my most powerful messages about the fates of wild places that I care about need to have words as well as images.
What I love is the writing, it's not having written. I like the process of it.
I like that it's challenging - that when I'm writing, I feel as if I'm pouring everything I have into the story until there's nothing left and I have to begin thinking about a new world and set of circumstances to research and explore.
I'm really such a bumbler! Writing fiction is like arranging furniture in a dark room. I can't see what I'm doing. I grope for the right words. I bump against the wrong words and stumble and stub my toe and curse and keep trying to guess what belongs in the space.
That's what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.
I'm very fortunate to be doing what I dreamed of, what I love. So few people get that opportunity. So while people continue liking what I write, I'm going to happily continue.
Writing is an extremely rewarding and humbling process, and I've learned to go with it, that even if it feels absolutely impossible, I will find a way to tell the next story.
Just go outside and look at something and write it down and you'll find it is a very nice piece of writing.