Well, I'm probably making it sound worse than it is. I have a perfectly good mental image of all my major and most of my minor characters, it's just that my mental pictures aren't very panoramic, and when the dialogue is really flowing for me, it's like when you close your eyes to concentrate on a piece of music. The visual side almost fades out--I can imagine the expressions on their faces, and how near or far they are from each other, but that's about it. So I layer the rest in on rewrite.

I'm finding it easier to imagine visuals for Anna's story than I ever did for Lucy's, but I don't know if that's my growth as a writer or just that it's a better story.

It's not the panorama I'm talking about - it's the minutiae of a character. When I see a character, I'm seeing them as a human being, complete and whole. That includes how they move, how they react, what pushes their buttons.

Dialogue is nice, but I've never found a book where I thought the dialogue carried it.

Well, that's why I rewrite. I'm stuck with the brain and imagination I have, and since in most ways they serve me well, I'm prepared to learn to compensate for their limitations.

I mean, what can I do? My brain is as it is. I think I've got enough strengths as a writer that it'd be foolish of me to stop because of the weaknesses.

Well, if you're a writer, the point is moot, since you couldn't stop even if you wanted to.

But this is an old, old discussion; writers write. All different.

I seem to have been lucky in that the little fidgets and bits of business that people do when they're talking come fairly naturally.

I've probably got half a dozen writers' books, all told, some of which I wish I hadn't put down money for, but all of them at least have one nifty bit of advice that I hadn't thought of before. Hence actually sitting down with them and distilling them into a notebook.

And then I'll be able to write my own writer's guide!

Well, I don't know about that. I didn't write a word of fiction while I was in college, then stopped again between 1997 and 2001. And the project I started in 2001 was the first one of any length I actually finished. But there's certainly nothing I feel more compelled to do, nor anything I love in quite the same way.

And I'm happy with the work I'm doing now. It's satisfying to write and, I think, to read. It's got me by the throat.

I didn't say a writer wrote all day and all night, Susan. Just that we wrote. I stopped writing for ten years, remember? After deciding I'd had enough of the industry, as it was being run in the hands of a select few of those pesky gatekeepers.

Here I am, though.

Sorry. I'm just a little touchy on that count because the main reason it took me so long to start writing again after the project I dropped in 1997 was that I believed all the writing advice books that said if it wasn't a compulsion for you, then you probably weren't really a writer and therefore shouldn't bother.

Do they really say that? Good grief. Again, glad I don't read the things.

I don't think they mean by compulsion what I mean by compulsion. It smells as if they're trying to convince themselves (or us) that it's some kind of Higher Calling, or something.

I don't know about that. When the musician in me needs to play, I do that, because at that moment in time, it's what I'm happiest doing. And when the storyteller in me has something to tell, that's what I do.

Is that compulsion? It certainly isn't constant.

Angels and Demons sucked soi hard I was a complete bitch and wrote at Amazon that I would avoid Dan Brown's work like it had anthrax inside. And that my mother bought it for a quarter and she still overpaid. In my world, he's the lackey assigned to scrub Pelecanos' CD collection. Pulls Dennis Lehane's wheelbarrow and buys Deb's cat litter. Wonder who he's blowing.(But how do I feel?) Compulsion...hmm, if I didn't I'd hurt people...I'd say that counts. Also the fact that I was in preschool making my my mom take my dictation and thinking she didn't do it right...that points to a certain innateness. But I did back away for quite a few years thinking I was doing something more "real"