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Any writer is an optimist.

6 September 2013

'People come up to you and say, "Your writing has changed my life." What they really mean is you've changed the way they look at the world. If something of yours happens to be of help to them that's wonderful, but it wasn't me waving any kind of magic wand -the book is the intermediary...

'You always think, "Oh, if I only had a little chalet in the mountains! How great that would be and I'd do all this writing..." Except, no, I wouldn't. I'd do the same amount of writing I do now and the rest of the time I'd go stir crazy. If you're waiting for the perfect moment you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof...

Any writer is an optimist. Why? Number one: they think they'll finish their book. Number two: they think somebody will publish it. Number three: they think somebody will read it. That's a lot of optimism. It's optimistic in and for itself because it believes in human communication.'

Margaret Atwood, author of MaddAddam in the Sunday Telegraph's Stella