...A novel is a long and patient proposition, like embroidering a tapestry of many threads and colors. I work by instinct, without knowing very well what I am doing, until one day I turn it over and look at the design. I never really end a book, I just give up. There is always more to tell, another twist in the plot, another surprising character, more that could be changed, edited or deepened. A story is a living creature with it's own destiny and my job is to allow it to tell itself. I enjoy the process of writing without thinking much of the final result. That's my agent and my publishers' concern...
I love the time I spend alone and in silence in my study, weeks adding details to create the unique world of the story, months allowing the characters to grow and to talk for themselves, years trying to understand their motivations and their passions. A novel requires passion, patience and dedication, it is a total commitment, like falling in love. For me the first impulse that triggers the writing is always a profound emotion that has been with me for a long time; time reveals the motivations and gives me enough distance, ambiguity and irony to narrate it. It is difficult to write in the middle of the hurricane, it is preferable to recreate the story after the furious winds have passed and I can make some sense of the debris. Struggle, losses, confusion, memory, those are the raw materials of my writing.
