Before journalism, I had worked doing medical aid work in conflict zones. Then, as a journalist, I had written about hospitals in war zones.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Journalism took me around the world. I worked in London for ten years and reported on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the first Gulf War.
I became a journalist because one didn't have to specialise.
I always wanted to be some kind of writer or newspaper reporter. But after college... I did other things.
I never set out to be a journalist. I wanted to be a humanitarian doctor like Albert Schweitzer, working in Africa.
I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.
I was in a profession that received a lot of media.
My first real writing job was at 'Rolling Stone,' so I wrote about rock-and-roll and politics and the like. At the time, I really didn't know what I wanted to write, and I did a bunch of investigative journalism.
I wrote about four novels before I wrote a word of journalism.
And I wasn't a journalist any more than I was a trained nurse.
I used to be a journalist.