anne • sikking

When it comes to novels, I don't worry about writing about what I know. I write what I might want to read.

 

In terms of facts – history, architecture, how to make bombs, the minutiae of policing, events, place – these can all be researched.

 

As for characterisation – how people feel, respond, act – evidence for that is everywhere. We need only watch ourselves, watch others. 

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Someone once said to me that they never read fiction. "Why should I wander through the mind of someone I don't know when I have my own mind to wander through?" I suppose reading a novel is like having a companion as one wanders, finding where the landscapes of our minds differ and where they are the same.

 

Comparison in itself can be illuminating...​