When I Write New Worlds,

When I Write A New Draft, I Don't Like To Feel I'm Tied To Any Previous Version. That's Why I Don't Use A Computer To Write. The Text Looks, On The Screen, Too Much Like A Book. It's Not A Book - It's A Bad First Draft Of Something That Could One Day Be A Book.

Writing By Hand Is A Way Of Letting Mystery Into My Writing. But I'm Constantly Trying To Figure Out How To Do This Job. It's A Work In Progress.

The Darkest Period Of My Life, So Far, Arrived The Summer I Was Pregnant With My Eldest Son. The Future Was Growing In Me With All Of Its Terrifying Unpredictability, And I Found Myself Anxious, Unable To Work And Woefully At Sea.

Research Is About Following The Gleam Into The Dark. It's Also About Being Sensitive Enough To Know Which Fact Is "the Creative Fact; The Fertile Fact; The Fact That Suggests And Engenders," As Opposed To The Fact That Deadens And Kills A Delicate New Project.

I've Always Relied On Producing More Material Than I Need. With Each Of My Published Novels I've Written Around Four Times The Amount Of Material That's Ended Up In The Book.