Writing is a communication.
Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.
The desire to write grows with writing.
I learned never to empty the well of my writing but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.
I'd say that after my father passed my writing changed it went deeper. Most would say 'matured' but I don't think I'd use that word in relation to my progress. I think 'change' is a little more accurate.
I was born left-handed but I was made to use my other hand. When I was writing 'Famished Road ' which was very long I got repetitive stress syndrome. My right wrist collapsed so I started using my left hand. The prose I wrote with my left hand came out denser so later on I had to change it.
Becoming a mother cannot help but change things. An author's life is reflected in their writing whether they want it to be or not and parenthood is one of the biggest life changes there is.
I read and walked for miles at night along the beach writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.
If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing because you have that space.
Writing fiction is for me a fraught business an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.
In recent years I've been writing because I'm fortunate enough to work in the world of food television to travel and taste and learn about cooking from the best chefs in the business.
The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out where in my writing I might go next.
There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.
I gave up lots of things I love doing: writing and business and playing the piano and so on.
No there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn't sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours' writing. Nothing.
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid stable business.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
I wasn't very good about juggling family and my career. I was interested in who was coming to the children's birthday party what my son was writing. I was thinking about Legos.
The best writing is not about the writer the best writing is absolutely not about the writer it's about us it's about the reader.
Like anything else that happens on its own the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have but when it comes to the act of creation the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.
In writing and politicking it's best not to think about it just do it.
The real beauty of it - key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing.
Beauty can't amuse you but brainwork - reading writing thinking - can.
All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on walking towards utopia which may not exist on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side.
While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial gossip among men especially if it is about women is called theory or idea or fact.