When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I'm familiar with. I don't write stories about the nineteenth century.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I considered that I had to write stories about the people I had met, with whom I'd worked, the history of my books - just in case I up and die.
Most people write a lot of autobiography, but when I came to write autobiography I discovered that nothing interesting had ever happened to me. So I had to take the situation and invent stories to go with it.
All the stories I write come from someone I've met or some anecdote I've heard.
I was always a storyteller. I just didn't know it. I never shared the stories I made up inside my head when I was growing up. I never wrote them down, either. But I can't remember a time when they weren't there.
It's probably why I'm a short story writer. I tend to remember things in the past in narrative form, in story form, and I grew up around people who told stories all the time.
I don't have any great first job tales: I've never worked on a tramp steamer or in a coal mine or anything like that. I think the inspiration for my writing came largely from my father and the joy that life in books represented to me.
A lot of the stories I've read about myself, I don't even recognize who they're writing about.
I always take a story that's kind of out there, like an urban myth. I take some possibility that people imagine, that they are familiar with, and try to turn it into a story.
As far as what I do, my value as a writer is certainly not to try to recapitulate a 19th century form. Certain styles of narrative don't conform to my style of experiencing the world.
I'm always drawn to stories that people don't know about, particularly when they're inside of a story that everyone knows about.