At 18 - the summer of 1978 - I decided to become a writer. I thought it would be a wonderful way to spend a life and I think I was right. I work slowly; I often have no idea of where I'm going with a novel, or I have the very slightest intuitive feel for where to go, like a breeze on the cheek, or the calling of something, some night bird, in the far woods. Ten novels so far (I said I'm slow). I've tried to write each one as though it was both the first and the last. For me, what matters, is to keep opening out, to keep trusting that there is something rather than nothing, to keep taking risks, to write, to try to write, the book that I think I can't write, that is too much, too difficult, too strange. That one.