Sometimes on Sunday

Edna O’Brien, the talented Irish novelist, said in an interview, “Writers are always working. They never stop.” This is the nature of the job of writing, at least of writing fiction. Writers are either developing an idea or they are questing, even if unconsciously, for the germ of an idea. I create things out of boredom with reality and with the sameness of routine and objects around me. Therefore, I don’t dislike this boredom which encroaches on me every now and then, and I even try to create it by routine. I do not “have to work” in the sense that I must drive myself to it or make myself think what to do, because the work will come to me. I get the same pleasure from making a table, a good drawing, occasionally a painting, as I do from writing a book or a short story.
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Patricia Highsmith. Plotting and writing suspense