Pat Barker on How Writers Work.

 Very interesting interview in Winter 2018 Paris Review with prolific British writer Pat Barker.

I particularly liked her comment about how she began to think about writing about war.  Her grandfather had a bayonet wound in his side.  "...I would ask him what it was, but it must have been difficult for him to answer that question, since he never spoke about the war.  I can't remember what he said--there was the wound and there was silence, so there was a mystery, and that is what usually sets a novelist going.'

And the zinger, the core of creating fiction:


"People are always saying, Oh, I know a wonderful story, but you don't want a wonderful story, you want a little something that you can turn into a story.  You need a gap. You need mystery? "