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.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Well, my background is journalism. I don't have any creative-writing experience except for one class I took as a sophomore in college.
I started writing in my 20s. I just wanted to write, but I didn't have anything to write about, so in the beginning, I wrote entertainments - mainly murder mysteries.
I always wanted to be some kind of writer or newspaper reporter. But after college... I did other things.
I was an English major in college, took a ton of creative writing courses, and was a newspaper reporter for 10 years.
When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't true. What became important was to have a point of view.
I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.
I'd always liked to write, but I never wanted to be a writer, because it seemed a sissy occupation. It is. To this day, I find it terribly easy. And so, rather than trying to hunt up a text, I just wrote one.
I think I became a writer because I didn't know of anything else to do. Maybe some incident from my childhood influenced me.
My intent was to gain experience for fiction I eventually hoped to write. But there's no question I was drawn in by the hope that journalism would be a creative, thrilling environment.
I wasn't always a novelist. I began my writing career as a journalist, working on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney, Australia, doing the crime beat and court reporting. Having grown up in a small country town, I felt as though I had nothing to write about.