In The End, Fiction Is The Craft

When I Meet People I Try To Make A Joke Out Of My Occupation, Explaining That What I Do All Day Is Sit Alone In A Darkened Room, Flicking Through Some Pages, Jumping On A Treadmill Now And Then. I Keep My Serious Work As A Writer Private, But That Doesn't Mean It's Not Serious Work - Quite The Opposite.

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.

It's Not Easy To Make Friends When You're An Adult Writer Outside Of Academia, Especially When You Work Alone In A Little Room For Twelve Hours A Day, And So I Wrote Toward What I Most Longed For.

I'm A Writer, Not An Actor. I Want To Write Rather Than Perform. I'm Looking Forward To Disappearing For A While.

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.