In My Childhood I Led

Just Like Those Who Are Incurably Ill, The Aged Know Everything About Their Dying Except Exactly When.

I Think I Write Or Publish As Much As I Do Because I Can Bear Being Without A Book To Work On. But Routinely When I Finish A Book, I Think, "what Will I Do? Where Will I Get An Idea?" And A Kind Of Low-level Panic Sets In. And Then Eventually Something Happens. I Don't Know. If I Knew How It Happened I Would Repeat The Process, But I Don't Know - Something Just Occurs To Me.

I Have A Slogan I Use When I Get Anxious Writing, Which Happens Quite A Bit: ‘the Ordeal Is Part Of The Commitment.’ It’s One Of My Mantras. It Makes A Lot Of Things Doable.

Eventually The Writing Takes Time. What I Want To Do Is Get The Story Down And I Want To Know What Happens As I Write My Way Into The Knowledge Of The Story.

We Live In An Age In Which The Imagination Of The Novelist Is Helpless Against What He Knows He Is Going To Read In Tomorrow's Newspaper.