Author Nick Hornsby has been neglecting writing novels in favor adapting other people’s novels for the screen. “First there was An Education, which earned Hornby an Academy Award nomination; then Wild, based on the Cheryl Strayed bestseller, which also yielded acclaim; and now Brooklyn, opening November 4. It’s becoming more of a practice than a habit,” Ari Karpel writes.

All that has him shifting his sense of who he is as a writer. “One interesting thing I’m just kind of getting my head around,” [Hornsby says,]  “is that most of this work is not self-generated. Once you’ve done a couple [adaptations] and they’ve worked out, people come to you. Then you find you have two or three things stacked up and that’s all taking up time and imaginative energy, whereas novels are entirely self-generated and you need to clear a space and say, I’m not going to do anything [else] for a year.”