Write About What Makes You Different.

I Never Know What Something Is Going To Be Until It Emerges From The Womb And You See The Crown Of Its Head And Then You See It Pushing Its Way Up. So In My Life If Another Book Wants To Be Born It's Not For Me To Choose.

The Only Reason We Write - Well, The Only Reason Why I Write; Maybe I Shouldn't Generalize - Is So That I Can Find Out Something About Myself. Writers Have This Narcissistic Obsession About How We Got To Be Who We Are. I Have To Understand My Ancestors - My Father, His Mother And Her Mother - To Understand Who I Am. It All Leads Back To The Narcissistic Pleasure Of Discovering Yourself.

I've Come To Some Balance Now And Calmness. If Anything Happened To Me And I Got Hit By A Bus - I Hope This Doesn't Happen, But If Something Happened - My Body Of Work Is Something I Could Rest On. I Don't Feel, "oh God, I Have To Hurry Up . . ."

I Have To Take Care Of The House, And The Dogs, And The Macondo Board Meetings, All Those E-mails, The Letters That Are Going To Fans. And You've Got To Pay Bills. These Things Eat Up Your Time. You Have To Prepare And Pack To Go On That Trip. Then When You Come Back You Have To File All That Stuff, Answer All That Mail, And That's Not Even Washing The Clothes Or Any Of That. So It Takes As Many Days As I've Been Away To Come Back To Normal And To Get Quiet.

That's What You Need For Your Writing - To Learn How To Be Present, Learn How To Be Calm. So Take That Nap, Do That Meditation.