Q: Do you ever get writer’s block?
A: I disavow that term. There are times when you don’t know what you’re doing or when you don’t have access to the language or the event. So if you’re sensitive, you can’t do it. When I wrote “Beloved,” I thought about it for three years. I started writing the manuscript after thinking about it, and getting to know the people and getting over the fear of entering that arena, and it took me three more years to write it. But those other three years I was still at work, though I hadn’t put a word down.
For more of this fascinating 1994 interview with Nobel Prize winner Chloe Wofford, a.k.a. Toni Morrison, please go here.