Writing is not a profession. It's a calling. It's almost holy.
I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.
For me, writing isn't a way of being public or private; it's just a way of being. The process is always full of pain, but I like that. It's a reality, and I just accept it as something not to be avoided. This is the life I have. This is the life I write about.
When I'm writing, I think about the garden, and when I'm in the garden I think about writing. I do a lot of writing by putting something in the ground.
What I really want to write about is injustice and justice, and the different ways human beings organize the two.
I write a lot in my head. The revision goes on internally. It's not spontaneous and it doesn't have a schedule.
In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other. And the important thing isn't whether I'm angry. The more important thing is, is it true? Do these things really happen?
A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can't do anything else, and then you have another job.
What I don't write is as important as what I write.
if I'd thought that nobody would like it as I was writing it, I would have written it even more. But I never think of the audience. I never think of people reading. I never think of people, period.
I'm writing out of desperation. I felt compelled to write to make sense of it to myself - so I don't end up saying peculiar things like 'I'm black and I'm proud.' I write so I don't end up as a set of slogans and clichés.
I can write anywhere. I actually wrote more than I ever did when I had small children. My children were never a hindrance.
In my writing I'm trying to explore the violations people commit upon each other.
Everything I do is because of writing. If I go for a walk, it's because I'm thinking of writing. I go look at flowers, I go look at the garden, I go look at a museum, but it's all coming back to writing.
The resistance to my work, and to my way of writing, has been there from the beginning. The first things I wrote were these short short stories collected in At the Bottom of the River, and at least three of them are one sentence long. They were printed in The New Yorker, over the objections of many of the editors in the fiction department.
In my writing, I'm often describing a universal situation. A situation in which human beings often choose to violate each other. Sometimes I happen to explore that in terms of the black/white dynamic. Generally, a white person does not like me to say, or does not like to be told, "You know, what you did was incredibly wrong."
If I describe a person's physical appearance in my writing, which I often do, especially in fiction, I never say someone is "black" or "white." I may describe the color of their skin - black eyes, beige skin, blue eyes, dark skin, etc. But I'm not talking about race.
My writing has always been met with derision or dismissal.
The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it's the wrong thing. It's not a profession.
I don't really do anything that isn't about writing, and I don't really know who I am if I'm not thinking about writing.
I write out of defiance.
Gardeners (or just plain simple writers who write about the garden) always have something they like intensely and in particular, right at the moment you engage them in the reality of the borders they cultivate, the space in the garden they occupy at any moment, they like in particular this, or they like in particular that.
When I write a book, I hope to be beyond mortal by the time I'm finished.
When I start to write something, I suppose I want it to change me, to make me into something not myself.
I read about writers who have routines. They write at certain times of the day. I can't do that. I am always writing-but in my head.
