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Comment from the book world in November 2008

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November 2008

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'Write about what you know'

24 November 2008

'Write about what you know. And embroider the hard facts a little if absolutely necessary. I don't exaggerate or embellish so much in my stories since I started writing for the New Yorker because their fact checkers are as fearsome as their legend suggests. I wouldn't be able to say that I took my water off the table without them first establishing that I'd put it on the table. I wrote about a child molester in our village in France and their French-speaking fact-checker called the farmer and his wife across the street from us and corroborated everything with them.'

David Sedaris, author of When You Are Engulfed in Flames in the Observer.

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Saturday Night and Sunday Morning hits 50

17 November 2008

'It's something that comes from within you, the need to write. You're born with it....

I think all those years of writing before being published had taught me to write with precision. I didn't want to indulge in purple passages and overwrite and use too many words. I knew that the voice and tone was just right. I had found my own way, which is just as well.

I'm pragmatic about the first two books.They got me going and have allowed me to write for all these years. As long as I'd had a roof over my head and food on the table, I would have carried on writing whetherI was published or not.'

Alan Sillitoe in The Times

'We are all in the copyright business'

10 November 2008

'Digital activity is critical to the evolution of publishing and in children's we are best placed to break this out because our audience is already there, growing up with it. I produce books and love working with great authors, and whether that's online or in print doesn't matter to me. What matters is that their work reaches as many children as possible. As a children's publisher we have to be aware of, and embrace, as many models as possible. We are all in the copyright business and we have to work out how to make the right connections.'

Ann-Janine Murtagh, Publisher of Children's Fiction and Picture books at HarperCollins UK, in Publishing News

'Just one thing that I wanted to write about'

3 November 2008

'When I began, there was just one thing that I wanted to write about, which was the true devastation of racism on the most vulnerable, the most helpless unit in the society - a black female and a child. (On winning her Nobel) 'I felt representative,I felt American, I felt Ohioan,I felt blacker than ever. I felt more woman than ever.'

Toni Morrison in the Observer