This is the fourth excerpt from David Armstrong's wry and entertaining How not to Write a Novel: Confessions of a Midlist Author
4. Bookshops
'to the big bookshop in NottingHill …extremely depressed by the number of books in the shop and left immediately. ' Simon Gray
One of the pleasures of being a writer, surely, has to be a visit to the bookshop? Like an athlete at the gym, the car salesman on his windy lot, this is, after all, our home from home. Read more
© David Armstrong 2016-16
'If you aren't growing as a writer, you are dead.'
'Dear Aspiring Writer, you are not ready. Stop. Put that finished story away and start another one. In a month, go back and look at the first story. RE-EDIT it. Then send it to a person you respect in the field who will be hard on you. Pray for many many many red marks. Fix them. Then put it away for two weeks. Work on something else. Finally, edit one last time. Read more