Rumpus: Have you come to know why you write, or what compels you to do it?

Zadie Smith: No. No I don’t feel compelled. It was a job. In more recent years, I’ve seen that’s not quite true because if I don’t write—I do apparently need to write. Maybe it’s true. The way for me to deal with writing is to deal with it as a daily task I set myself and then I carry on. I don’t look at the big picture very often, I don’t know why that is, but it suits me better that way.

--from The Rumpus Interview with Zadie Smith