...it just goes to show you can't leave anything behind. You bring it all with you, whether you want to or not.
If writers stuck to firsthand experience, novels would be pretty limited.
I don't think I could write about someone I didn't feel some sympathy for.
Initially I only decided to try and write a novel because I wasn't getting enough screenwriting work. It wasn't a long-held ambition, and certainly the idea came first.
I definitely do feel a pull toward people and places that are far from my own life.
I love research, and in fact it's liberating because you have to create your own world. No one can say "I've just got back from the 1860s, and you got it wrong." Anyway, it's fiction.