Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
The idea of being a novelist is really romantic, but it's kind of the same as being president of the United States - it's not gonna happen.
What ultimately happened is that my country had a war. I think it would be extraordinary, as a writer, not to want to write about that.
Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write.
I think fiction writers should work. If you have a job and are not living off advances or grants, you never have to make concessions in your writing, ever.
There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.
I really think more fledgling novelists - and many current and even established novelists - should get out into the real world and cover local politics, sports, culture, and crime and write it up on deadline.
A writer without his country is nothing.
Men like women who write. Even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country.