Humans know when it's not a good story. Unless you do this for a living, you may not know exactly why you don't like a story, but you can't fool an audience ever. They know when you have it and they know when you don't.
I think that instinct, that storytelling instinct, rescued me most of my life.
Before I could read, I remember trying to piece together the stories from the images. It was a very primal experience.
I can't remember a time when I didn't write or make up stories, because it seemed to come with reading.
The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it.
I grew up with some kind of storytelling instinct, and when I write, my default setting is to find a story and then to tell it. It's the only way I know how to write.
When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.
In this choice, as I look back over more than half a century, I can only follow - and trust - the same sort of instinct that one follows in the art of fiction.
I do have an innate understanding of where a story should or shouldn't go, in a way that I don't think can be taught.
We're all born storytellers. It's part of the species. But, more specifically, I suppose a particular combination of sensitivity and trauma made me a writer: an essential disquiet with reality, which required exploration through portrayal.
I connect to the tradition of Irish storytelling. And I think there is something - I can't put my finger on it - something genetic there. Maybe just a need to tell stories.
I was never cold-blooded enough to look for a gap in the market. I loved stories and wanted to tell stories that should be told.
Journalists don't retire, writers don't retire. I'm still hoping for that other big story. There's always one just around the corner.
Every story I do is about people. It's my survival instinct - one person, one story.
I love telling stories. I don't really think in terms of clear 'aims.'
