No, absolutely not, writing doesn't have to be like a jigsaw puzzle, it can be a very linear undertaking.

I do not consider myself a Hispanic writer.

You are just in the middle of a struggle with words which are really very stubborn things, with a blank page, with the damn thing that you use to write with, a pen or a typewriter, and you forget all about the reader when you are doing that

My parents were founders of the Cuban Communist Party, and I grew up extremely poor.

I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity

Well, I write in exile because I cannot return to my country, so I have no choice but to see myself as an exiled writer.

I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels