Why Write Novels?

Writing is like drinking beer: at first you don’t like it but it feels grown up; then you enjoy it, but you’re not very good at it; last of all, you stop enjoying it, but by that point it’s the thing you’re best at, so you decide to stick with it.

I can’t say when or why I started writing. The truth is that I have always done it. I wrote before I had any interest in why I wrote or what its purpose might be. I felt instinctively that words were the only way to arrange a thought, and arranging...