Well, it all goes back to when I was a kid. When I made a decision, when I was a sophomore in high school, the decision was to be a writer. And I have been writing fiction since I was a teenager. You know, shorts stories and stuff like that. None of them were very good. None of them deserved to ever be published.
But what happen to me was, I know I am so fortunate. Worse thing that you can do is be around somebody who is fortunate, does not know what her want and would not admit it. If you are not, that is not the case here, okay, fortunate that I know it.
But I have decided I wanted to do both and I decided that early. There was “I wanted to be a journalist, I wanted to be reporter” but also “I wanted to go into my imagination. I wanted to write stories, made up stories.” I got very much into Hemmingway, I was Hemmingway generation person.
Hemmingway said, if you wanted to be a writer, get a job on this paper. It will force you to deal with the English language everyday and some semicolon here way. Keep foot on the table and if you really pay attention you will meet all kinds of people that can later be characters in your novels or whatever or fiction you are writing and most importantly you will be confront of what kinds of humans dilemmas in journalism that you can later use automatically when you come to write a fiction and that is certainly what has happened to me.
So, what I have done a parallel at these parallel things and as a practical matter I write a little bit on my fiction everyday, it is just what I do. Yes, I have my day job, I do that too. But I do both things everyday and I have it for years.
I do not get up in the morning saying, am I going to write today. The only I think about of this what I am going to write not if I am going to write. I have not really thought this completely out, but I think probably what’s happened to me and I mean it’s glorious, I am so lucky, to be able to do this.
I’m writing fiction, so I am free to let my imagination go. It’s a consequence because I have the fiction, no body should ever after watch the news hour and say “Who is Jim Ware and what is he is really like and what is his, you know.” Now, I do not want people thinking about, I want them in the pay attention on what I am saying. You know and not who I am and what are views are. Is he really sad or it is really happy or into that sort of stuff.
And to keep my personality, my persona, is probably the better way in putting that away from what my purposes which is to present the news. I think I am free to do that because I have my fictions. So you may want to know, it is not likely a bit that somebody listened to it and looking into the deep recesses of my mind and soul about some of my fundamental beliefs about human nature or whatever. Read my fiction, do not watch that news hours and I am lucky to have those two things.
