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Comment from the book world in September 2013

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September 2013

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'I'm not sending it out any more.'

30 September 2013

'I didn't know the first thing about publishing, I didn't know anybody in publishing, I didn't care about having anything to do with publishing during those six years I wrote it... I did it (self-published) for my mental health. The frustration was starting to get to me. You think, "Gee, I spent three years of my life sending letters to agents - three years of my life, for God's sake." When you sit down and do the math, its' depressing. Many of them just said no, or didn't answer, which apparently is acceptable behaviour in the agent world, but nowhere else, right? I think I just had to say, "You know what, it's over, I'm not sending it out any more. I don't care...

'I remember one (friend) said, "So, are you waiting for the reviews?" and I looked at him and said,."There's not going to be any reviews, man. I hate to break the news to you - other than the people in this room, nobody's ever going to know that this happened."

Sergio De La Pava, author of A Naked Singularity, which won the 2013 $25,000 PENSupported by eminent writers, this is the English branch of International Pen, which has centres in nearly 100 countries. It fights for freedom of expression and against political censorship. It campaigns for writers harassed, imprisoned and sometimes murdered for their views. http://www.englishpen.org/ Literary Award for a debut novel.

 

 

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'Are these people real to me?'

22 September 2013

'I just want to tell a good story so I always ask myself, are these people real to me? The things I write about are completely removed from my own life, but people to know the characters better. There are schools of thought that dispense with all that now, but I think if there are strong characters, people want to know more.

I have talked before about the withholding of information from the reader in a great book like Jane Austen's Emma and I do think it should be part of any story, if it is told well, whether or not it is detective fiction. The reader needs to be thinking, what does it mean? Why did they do that?'

Ruth Rendell

'A deus ex machina'

16 September 2013

'It took a while to get the tone right. In YA everything has to be filtered through eyes and experience of the young adult, there can't be an intervening adult that comes down like a deus ex machina providing useful information or a weapon... adults can't do anything to resolve the critical issues in the plot. I didn't know that getting into it; it took me five drafts to figure that out...

I wanted to open Lynley's story up as I felt it was starting to close down. He was married, his wife Helen was pregnant, and they had resolved all sorts of personal problems... When Helen dies I asked the readers to feel something, I needed them to experience, at least in some respects, a margin of devastation. I've been asking readers to come and share in Lynley's life and I hoped they would feel something of what he would feel. I knew I had been successful when people were outraged. If you had finished that book, shrugged, threw it over your shoulder and then went in the kitchen and made yourself a sandwich, it hadn't worked.'

Elizabeth George, author of The Edge of Nowhere (YA) and Just One Evil in the Bookseller

 

 

Any writer is an optimist.

6 September 2013

'People come up to you and say, "Your writing has changed my life." What they really mean is you've changed the way they look at the world. If something of yours happens to be of help to them that's wonderful, but it wasn't me waving any kind of magic wand -the book is the intermediary...

'You always think, "Oh, if I only had a little chalet in the mountains! How great that would be and I'd do all this writing..." Except, no, I wouldn't. I'd do the same amount of writing I do now and the rest of the time I'd go stir crazy. If you're waiting for the perfect moment you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof...

Any writer is an optimist. Why? Number one: they think they'll finish their book. Number two: they think somebody will publish it. Number three: they think somebody will read it. That's a lot of optimism. It's optimistic in and for itself because it believes in human communication.'

Margaret Atwood, author of MaddAddam in the Sunday Telegraph's Stella

Writing for 50 years now

2 September 2013

'I've been writing for 50 years now and used to be very disciplined about it, writing every day. I'm not so much any more, and when I do, it's wherever I happen to be. I also used to write longhand, on legal pads - my ex-husband was a lawyer - whereas now it's a laptop.

Writing now is more a question of time, and a novel means finding a year to sit down and actually do it. I've worked hard all my life, so it's nice to be able to relax a little.'

Alice Walker, author of The Colour Purple, on being 69, in The Times