Bernard MacLaverty on writing

The author answers the question “Why do I Write?” on his website:

I was once asked this question by a newspaper. It is a very hard question to answer - once you have put aside things like ‘earning a living’ and ‘you make your own hours’ or in my case ‘half hours’. Then I thought a little further - about why I choose to do this and came up with the following .

It is in the nature of every child to play - unless hungy or sick - and when I was young I used to like playing farms - setting out the toy animals, ducks on a round mirror pond, and the farmer and his wife, maybe one day face to face, the next day with their backs to each other. Making up a world, moving people within it. Even commentating aloud about what the various people or animals are doing, as they do it.

Writing is perhaps the grown up version of this activity - a way of trying to make sense of a difficult world.