By asking a novel question that you don't know the answer to, you discover whether you can formulate a way of finding the answer, and you stretch your own mind, and very often you learn something new.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Whenever I write a novel, I have a strong sense that I am doing something I was unable to do before. With each new work, I move up a step and discover something new inside me.
We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.
You can't do science in a novel, but you can do philosophy. Or, if you're really lucky, you can manage to pose a question in such a way that other people will take it on.
To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.
In order for a long piece of work to engage a novelist over an extended period of time, it has to deal with questions that you find very important, that you're trying to work out.
Novels for me are how I find out what's going on in my own head. And so that's a really useful and indeed critical thing to do when you do as many of these other things as I do.
Whenever I do a book, I'm usually guided by a question or something that I'm trying to tease out.
I love to write a book out of questions; in fact, I think it's the only way my writing can operate, if there's something I don't understand.
I write novels because there is something I don't understand in reality.
Although a novel takes place in the larger world, there's always some drive in it that is entirely personal - even if you don't know it while you're doing it.
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