With "Margaret," I remember clearly it was, you know because I did remember it clearly. I was young. I was young in terms of experience and what did I know about and I had an incredible memory from my own childhood. And so it never occurred to me to write for any other age group. And I thought I'm going to write a book and I'm going to tell the truth.
I didn't consciously make the decision to write an adult novel. I didn't think of it as my riposte to the YA genre.
Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.
I decided to write a book primarily because people talked me into it.
'The Woman on the Train' just didn't sound as good. I'll take care next time not to have 'girl' in the title.
I do not believe that I will ever write an adult novel from an animal's point of view unless someday it becomes suddenly appealing to me to make a narrator a mentally ill pet. Never say never.
Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.
I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.
With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.
I will write another book if I feel like it.
When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.
I didn't 'decide' to write YA, per se. But every time I thought of a story, it featured characters 15, 16, 17.
