Like all writers, I draw from life as I know it; but it's a refracted kind of reality, and none of it is factually true.
All writers start out mimicking other writers. I've never relinquished that. I have a good ear for speech and writing patterns.
Graham Greene famously said that all writers need a chip of ice in their heart; Cusk can come across as the most beautiful ice palace of stalactites and stalagmites, and some people find her company, albeit by proxy, about as inviting as a long weekend in a walk-in frigidaire.
All writers of the Chaldaean period associate monotheism in the closest way with unity of worship.
I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?'
All writers are battling and fighting as to how a woman should be characterised.
All writers have a love-hate relationship with writing. Performing is fun, too, but I wouldn't say it's my favorite. But the most fulfilling is producing.
All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.
All writers I know are readers first and foremost, and that's why you become a writer.
All writers of fiction will at some point find themselves abandoning a piece of work - or find themselves putting it aside, as we gently say.
