I rarely write by myself.
In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.
I didn't have any writer friends in college. I was a computer science major, but I was writing a lot, probably more than anybody I knew. I started to submit novels to New York when I was a freshman in college.
At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.
I believe strongly in writing groups such as Romance Writers Of America that offer support, information and networking.
I love writers. All of my best friends are writers.
Writers may be solitary but they also tend to flock together: they like being solitary together.
You get to Hollywood and you are in the land of big money where they don't like to see only one screenwriter's name. It's much better if you've got four or five.
I like helping other writers who don't know what to do or where to go in New York.
A lot of my writer friends live near me, and that makes people think we just hang around with one another in cafes, trading work and discussing 'Harper's' and what not. But I rarely see them. We're home working.
My natural orientation has never been among a community of writers, really. For some reason my social world has always been in the art world.
I don't have a whole bunch of literary connections. I don't write reviews or attend writer's conferences. I'm kind of shy and don't want to go to a party. I just want to stay home and read my murder mysteries and try to write and cook dinner.
I think if I was ever really going to be more serious about writing I'd have to try and find some way to do it with other people. I do find the silence kind of eerie.
