Quote

I still have a full-time day job, which is why it took me five years to write An Ear to the Ground, and why I won't have another book finished by next week.

If you're going to write a book that might, in its very best accidental career, sell 30,000 copies, you've got to have a day job.

I don't think I would do better books if I wrote full time. I write for amateurish reasons.

Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.

Typically, a book takes me about a year to write.

It takes a long time to write a novel when you have to keep interrupting your work to earn money.

Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters.

Writing is self employment, so you can make your own schedule.

With the novels, I try to write a few pages a day - it doesn't sound much, but it can be difficult if I'm not sure where the story is going.