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"

There are stories in my head. Sometimes they get written down, sometimes they don't. After my father died in '82, I shut down for a long time in a fit of "rather childish, isn't it?" But the stories didn't shut up. I had to start writing again just to relieve the mental pressure.

I've always wondered at the difference between "writing is words on paper/electronic media" and "writing as a fully coherent set of thoughts that could be transferred to a more permanent mode whenever you want." Sort of like your brain being a hard drive with its own collection of documents. If you're still constructing stories in your head that have more structure than merely daydreams, then you're coming a little close to writing. To my mind.