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I'm a writer; it's not just what I do, but who I am.

I was always meant to be a writer. I've felt that way since I was a child.

I come from a family of writers. My mom had been a writer, nonfiction books, and her mother was a playwright in the 1930s and '40s. And my twin brother, Alexi, is a writer on 'The Following.'

Being a twin, and knowing if my twin was gone or lost - that's a part of me. There's no way I could be the same person knowing my brother had passed away.

In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time.

I knew I wanted to be a writer and I knew if I had a wife and family, I would neglect something, and I was afraid it wouldn't be the writing.

My essential identity is that of a writer.

It's that kind of thing that readers have. I have it as a reader myself: that expectation that the writer will be that person. Then I meet other writers and realize that they're not.

I'm not one of those true writers who can't bear not to be writing. Yet it's one of the most important things in my life.

I found 'The Twin' sitting on a coffee table at a writers' colony in 2009. It carried praise from J.M. Coetzee. That seemed ample justification for using it to avoid my own writing. I finished it - weeping - a day later, and I've been puzzling over its powerful hold on me ever since.