What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore - it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene.
I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.
But today we become aware of other readings of the human experience very quickly because of the media and the speed with which people travel the planet.
I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again.
I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.
