First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.

Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.

You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.

I'm me, and I'm here, and I'm writing,

I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.

Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.

I just knew there were stories I wanted to tell.

Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyse yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it.

No... a novel is a long business. I'm a slow writer, even when I'm doing very well I write slowly.