I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.
Since childhood, I wrote a lot of fiction, a lot of stories, but I most loved writing essays.
Samantha Powell: Whatever had or hadn't happened in the past, I was gonna be the hero of my own story.
All writers know how important a good title is. It's the first thing readers see, along with a knock-your-socks-off cover - a seductive 'come hither' for the story within.
Oskar Schindler: So the man can turn out a hinge in less than a minute, why the long story?
Often you hear stories about never working with children. I disagree because children still have that residual magical thinking. They haven't had their imagination knocked out of them by turning into adults and life experiences.
Growing up, I didn't have a lot of toys, and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon.
Ghost stories really scare me. I have such a big imagination that after I watch a horror movie like 'The Grudge', I look in the corners of my room for the next two days.
I grew up in Doncaster and have felt the love for football run through the town; it's for that reason that I have a real personal passion to make Doncaster Rovers a success story.
I read 'Rebecca' when I was a teenager and was swept away by the powerful voice, the gut wrenching suspense and the dark, twisted love story at its center.
I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel.
I have a two-story house and a bad memory, so I'm up and down those stairs all the time. That's my exercise.
Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in 'real' African culture, before it was tainted by the West, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.
My biggest enemy for the longest time was my head. When I first became successful, it made me anxious because I was overthinking everything, and you hear so many 'fail' stories.
I have no spy stories to tell, because I saw no spies. Nor did I understand, at that time, any opposition between American and Russian national interest.
I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can't find the time to write it.
The mass media in the days of newspapers and television it's hard to be able to find a story that's about just what you're interested in at the time you're interested in it.
In an approximate way, the logic of commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate.
Of course, every time someone does a story on plastic surgery, my name will be dragged up. I've made it safe for other people to have plastic surgery. It's no longer a bad word.
Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.
But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.
