With "Margaret," I remember clearly it was, you know because I did remember it clearly. I was young. I was young in terms of experience and what did I know about and I had an incredible memory from my own childhood. And so it never occurred to me to write for any other age group. And I thought I'm going to write a book and I'm going to tell the truth.
I didn't consciously make the decision to write an adult novel. I didn't think of it as my riposte to the YA genre.
Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.
I decided to write a book primarily because people talked me into it.
I do not believe that I will ever write an adult novel from an animal's point of view unless someday it becomes suddenly appealing to me to make a narrator a mentally ill pet. Never say never.
Usually I decide on what it is I'm writing next by the books I'm reading.
'The Woman on the Train' just didn't sound as good. I'll take care next time not to have 'girl' in the title.
When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.
I've never put Northern Ireland into a novel because it's not my territory. I come from the South, so my imaginative territory is very much the Republic of Ireland rather than the North. Even though, if I wrote a novel about the North, it might sell more.
With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.
I will write another book if I feel like it.
I didn't 'decide' to write YA, per se. But every time I thought of a story, it featured characters 15, 16, 17.
