From an interview posted on Bruce DeSilva's blog (with thanks to Dan Moran for pointing me toward it):

I never wanted to be a writer. I don't want to be one now. To me, writing is not an occupation; it's not a job; it's not an avocation. It's a response to life. I've never understood people who say, "I decided to be a writer." That's like saying you want to be a pine tree. Either you are a pine tree, or you are not.

That's from Gregory McDonald, one of the all-time great crime writers — one effortless paragraph to tell a large truth. Kind of like everything else he wrote . . .