In our continuing Web series we talk to authors writing in or about the Middle Kingdom about their literary habits, preferences and peculiarities and examine the question at the heart of being an author – why they write

Anne Warr is an Australian architect who has recently returned from Shanghai where she lived for seven years. While in Shanghai, Anne was commissioned by Watermark Press to write Shanghai Architecture, a definitive study of Shanghai architecture old and new, published in December 2007. Anne also taught Western Architecture at Tongji University and was one of the co-founders of Explore Shanghai Heritage, a volunteer group which, among other activities, produces walking tour brochures of historic Shanghai.

Why I write
Because someone asks me to.
Because I like to get an idea and work at it, see it expand and take a life of its own.
I particularly like it when an idea finds me, and I can examine it, unravel it and then knit it into some crazy new shape.

Do you write every day? If so, how many hours?
I type every day. But I don’t write every day. I keep looking for that hill to roll down, without stopping. Typing is easy. Writing is not.

Worst source of distraction?
E-mails – no self-discipline.
A telephone call can set me back half an hour, while I search for my train of thought.

Best source of inspiration?
The New Yorker.
Solitude.
Winter by the ocean.
Those who write well.

How often do you get writers' block/doubt your own ability?
When I’m working in a void.
I need connections, a deadline and someone cheering from the side-lines – with cups of tea.

Contemporary writer in any medium who you never miss?
Michael Leunig – Australian cartoonist.

Favorite Chinese writer?
Ha Jin - living.
Lao Tze - dead.

Best book about China?
Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng.
The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave.

Favorite book?
Letters of an Indian Judge to an English Gentlewoman (published 1934, Whicombe & Tombs)

Favorite writer?
It was Bruce Chatwin until I read a biography about him.
It was Laurens van der Post until I read his obituary.
Tolkein hasn’t let me down yet, and neither has Jane Austen.  

The book you should have read but haven't?
Simon Schama’s Landscape and Memory.

You look back at the first thing you had published and think...
Who could have written this….was it me….?  Thank heavens for my patient publisher.

How did you get started writing?
My work as an architect gradually morphed from drawing to writing. Then people just asked me to write, and the drawing fell away altogether. I haven’t written any fiction (well, I may have made up some things in my non-fiction writing), although I wrote poetry when I was at school, and enjoyed the craft of conveying complex meanings with few words.

Does writing change anything?
I’ve seen articles galvanize people into action. I’ve seen articles divide people. I’ve seen articles wound people. I’ve seen articles decide election outcomes. Writing can do anything, and can change the world.

What are you working on now and when is it out?
It’s a secret – both the topic and the coming out date! (I wish someone would let me in on the secret.)

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