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Comment from the book world in May 2016

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'I wasn't an overnight success'

30 May 2016

‘For me, that's what gave me my first break, so I wanted to encourage that. Many authors and illustrators find that leap of getting their first book published almost the hardest. I was thirty by the time I had my first book published. I wasn't an overnight success: How To Train Your Dragon was not by any means my first book, I wrote four or five picture books which were kind of moderately successful beforehand. I'd been working for five or six years as a writer with nobody paying any attention in particular, then How To Train Your Dragon came out! I hope publishers would have the patience nowadays to stick with somebody who didn't have a huge success.'

Cressida Cowell, author of How To Train Your Dragon in Bookbrunch

 

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'It's always the voice'

23 May 2016

'It always starts with instinct. Feeling a visceral excitement when I'm reading, that I'm being dragged deeper and taken somewhere I don't already know, through a voice I haven't heard before. For me, the voice is pretty much key. Some editors are plot hounds and understand genre, but I've never really been that person. For me, at least in fiction, it's always the voice. I would say voice first, character second, plot third. It's equally true in writerly nonfiction. I think it starts with that sense of excitement, then questions follow. Because I'm a somewhat quirky reader I always have to do a reality check on myself and say, Ok, you are excited about this, but do you think you can get other people excited about it? Is there an audience for it? I have a wonderful group of colleagues whom I can bounce things off, particularly my colleagues in publicity who are tremendous readers.

Editor Rebecca Saletan of US literary imprint Riverhead on Lithub

 

‘I love historical fiction'

16 May 2016

‘I love historical fiction. There are all sorts of historical continuities in life, but the past is always strange. My new novel (Donoghue's first since 2010's Room) is about a little girl in Ireland in the 1850s who doesn't eat, before anorexia was identified. Back then if you had a kid who wasn't eating, all sorts of theories would swirl around her. Some would see her as physically sick, others emotionally sick, others superpowered...

There's a lot of emphasis on the autobiographical in fiction at the moment. It can make you very preoccupied with what you've lived through yourself. I prefer to inhabit other people's lives and worlds. I like it when my readers don't realise they've read three of my books because they think of them as separate stories or styles.'

Emma Donoghue, author of Room and five other novels, in the Observer magazine

 

 

'I'm one of the world's great rewriters'

9 May 2016

‘I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

I find that three or four readings are required to comb out the cliches, line up pronouns with their antecedents, and insure agreement in number between subject and verbs...My connectives, my clauses, my subsidiary phrases don't come naturally to me and I'm very prone to repetition of words; so I never even write an important letter in the first draft. I can never recall anything of mine that's ever been printed in less than three drafts.

You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out.'

James A Michener

 

 

'Downton was a lovely adventure.'

3 May 2016

‘I am potentially lazy and I need to be driven. Some people bounce out of bed and can't wait to start working. I'm not like that. I work because I have to work - I promised such-and-such for the 17th and I've got to get it finished. That's part of who I am...

Downton was a lovely adventure. We were on this incredible magic carpet ride. It was an extraordinary experience and when I'm old and dying it will be one of those things I remember and bore my grandchildren with...

As a writer, you're supposed to be this incredibly sensitive person picking up every nuance of human behaviour. Yet you also need to be Attila the Hun with a skin as thick as a trunk. I did find the personal attacks quite hard. It was like a cat playing with a vole...

In this industry you're just trying to be undisappointing.'

Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey, whose latest project is Belgravia, available as a serial in 11 episodes from the website or a downloadable app, in the Sunday Telegraph.