‘The thing I like about novels is that they are a more forgiving form. You can make missteps. It's harder to write a really good short story - I'm more aware of the flaws in my short stories. There's pleasure I get being able to spend that much time with people and ideas in novels, but if you write a short story, the magical period of an idea to the excitement of composition and the first draft is short, but deeply pleasurable in a way novels are not...
I teach creative writing and I think it's not like making a soufflé; you can't give anyone the steps to follow. It can't be taught in the way life drawing can. But you can teach people how to notice what the work they admire is doing, and to sit around a table and look at their writing and how to make it achieve what it wants to achieve.'
Elizabeth McCracken, author of Bowlaway, Thunderstruck and four other books of novels, short stories and a memoir, in the Observer.
‘There were a couple of years where, if I could have finished the book, I could have stayed ahead of the show for another couple of years, and the stress was enormous. I don't think it was very good for me, because the very thing that should have speeded me up actually slowed me down. Every day I sat down to write and even if I had a good day - and a good day for me is three or four pages - I'd feel terrible because I'd be thinking: "My God, I have to finish the book. I've only written four pages when I should have written 40."
I'm glad of the emotional reactions, whether to the books or the television show, because that's what fiction is all about - emotion. If you want to make an intellectual argument or persuade someone, then write an essay or piece of journalism, write nonfiction. Fiction... should feel as if you're living these things when you read or watch them. If you're so distanced by it that a character dies and you don't care, then to an extent the author has failed.'
George R R Martin, whose epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire has been made into a hugely successful tv series, Game of Thrones, and which still has two more volumes to come, in the Observer.
'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. Now you are ready to sub your first work.
Criticism is hard to take at first. Trust me, I've been there. But learn to think of crit marks as a knife. Each one is designed to cut away the bad and leave a scar. Scars prove you've lived, learned and walked away a winner. Any writer who tells you they don't need edits is lying. I don't care if they have 100 books out. Edits make you grow and if you aren't growing as a writer, you are dead.'
Inez Kelley, author of Turn it Up, Myla by Moonlight, Jinxed and five other romance novels
‘Everything's upside down. They assume that to do something that appeals to a huge audience is somehow easier than to do something that appeals to a tiny audience. Because we do a book a year people think you just crank a handle and out it comes. All my peers are smart, intelligent, well-informed, interested in the world; everybody puts in a huge amount of effort. It's not easy to do. This peculiar assumption that it is needs to be laid to rest. As Henry James said, "Easy reading is hard writing."'
Jack Reacher and the ageing problem:
‘I think I'll do whatever I want, but I assume the reader is gonna give me a free pass. The reader always does anyway in terms of how you get into the story, which is always difficult for Reacher because he doesn't have any official role. It's always some coincidence. The reader says, "OK, I'll buy that, but the rest of it better be convincing." And it always is.'
Lee Child, author of 36 novels, including the highly successful Jack Reacher series and ranging from Blue Moon to Killing Floor in The Times magazine https://www.leechild.com/
‘What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering - that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some total stranger! If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.'
Margaret Drabble, author of 20 novels, including The Dark Flood Rises, A Summer Bird-Cage, The Needle's Eye and The Ice Age.
‘Before the actual placing of words on pages, The Testaments was written partly in the minds of the readers of its predecessor, The Handmaid's Tale, who kept asking what happened after the end of that novel. Thirty-five years is a long time to think about possible answers, and the answers have changed as society itself has changed and as possibilities have become actualities. The citizens of many countries, including the United States, are under more stress now than they were three decades ago.'
Margaret Atwood, author of The Testaments, The Handmaid's Tale, Lady Oracle, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace and 12 other novels, as well as poetry books, children's books and non-fiction, in the Sunday Times' Culture.http://margaretatwood.ca/
‘When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation?
Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute?'
Dan Simmons, author of 37 horror, science fiction, fantasy and historical novels and collections of short stories, including Drood, Hyperion and The Terror.
‘The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion - not to look around and say, "Look at yourselves, you idiots!," but to say, "This is who we are." ‘
Anne Lamott, author of seven non-fiction books, and the forthcoming Hallelujah Anyway, and two novels, Imperfect Birds and Rosie.
‘I had always wanted to be a writer as a child but couldn't spell out this dream to myself because during the Cultural Revolution all writers were condemned. To be a writer was the most dangerous profession. I wrote my first poem aged 16 and destroyed it. When I was working spreading manure in the paddy fields aged 16 and 17, I was always writing in my head. In my home town there was a black market selling books that had been banned. My 13-year-old brother was very entrepreneurial. He made money dealing Mao badges and used it to buy books, which he hid in a hole he dug in the garden... My father loved writing and encouraged us to write diaries. But I had to destroy my diary in the revolution.'
Jung Chang, author of the bestselling Wild Swans, Empress Dowager Cixi (with Jon Halliday) Mao The Untold Story and the just-published Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, about the sisters who helped shape modern China, in the Observer.http://www.jungchang.net/
‘First of all, I'm always writing from a point of view. I decide what the purpose of the scene is, and at least begin with some purpose. But, even more important, from whose point of view is this scene seen? Because then the narrative will take on somewhat the sound of the person who is seeing the scene...
I like third person. I don't want to be stuck with one character's viewpoint because there are too many viewpoints. And, of course, the bad guys' viewpoints are a lot more fun. What they do is more fun. A few years ago, a friend of mine in the publishing business called up and said, "Has your good guy decided to do anything yet?"'
Elmore Leonard, author of 45 novels, including Fifty-two Pickup, The Switch, Freaky Deaky, Get Shorty and Cuba Libre http://www.elmoreleonard.com/index.php
‘Before the actual placing of words on pages, The Testaments was written partly in the minds of the readers of its predecessor, The Handmaid's Tale, who kept asking what happened after the end of that novel. Thirty-five years is a long time to think about possible answers, and the answers have changed as society itself has changed and as possibilities have become actualities. The citizens of many countries, including the United States, are under more stresses now than they were three decades ago.'
Margaret Atwood, author 17 novels, including The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, which is shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize, in the Sunday Times Culture. http://margaretatwood.ca/
‘I first thought Reacher would appeal mostly to men. But the majority of my readers are women, which is really interesting. Even in the 21st century, women struggle to express themselves, they have to shout that much louder. It is usually women who are busier at work, holding families together, making the tough decisions. So I think they strongly identify with the fantasy of walking away from commitments. And being able to kick the crap out of other people...
I only really care about my readers. But I've always been irritated by the lazy assumption among critics that what I do is somehow easier than what ‘literary' novelists do. It's actually quite the reverse - to write something to please millions is obviously harder than doing something that only has to please thousands. I also think that genre writers have a greater responsibility. A literary reader has no expectation that everything they read is going to be great. If you pick up the latest Julian Barnes and it doesn't work, you go on to the next one. Many genre readers read one or two books a year - give them a bad book and they may stop reading altogether.'
Lee Child, author of the 23 Jack Reacher novels, most recently Past Tense, in Books magazine https://www.leechild.com/
2019
'It's harder to write a really good short story'
‘The thing I like about novels is that they are a more forgiving form. You can make missteps. It's harder to write a really good short story - I'm more aware of the flaws in my short stories. There's pleasure I get being able to spend that much time with people and ideas in novels, but if you write a short story, the magical period of an idea to the excitement of composition and the first draft is short, but deeply pleasurable in a way novels are not...
I teach creative writing and I think it's not like making a soufflé; you can't give anyone the steps to follow. It can't be taught in the way life drawing can. But you can teach people how to notice what the work they admire is doing, and to sit around a table and look at their writing and how to make it achieve what it wants to achieve.'
Elizabeth McCracken, author of Bowlaway, Thunderstruck and four other books of novels, short stories and a memoir, in the Observer.
George R R Martin and Game of Thrones
‘There were a couple of years where, if I could have finished the book, I could have stayed ahead of the show for another couple of years, and the stress was enormous. I don't think it was very good for me, because the very thing that should have speeded me up actually slowed me down. Every day I sat down to write and even if I had a good day - and a good day for me is three or four pages - I'd feel terrible because I'd be thinking: "My God, I have to finish the book. I've only written four pages when I should have written 40."
I'm glad of the emotional reactions, whether to the books or the television show, because that's what fiction is all about - emotion. If you want to make an intellectual argument or persuade someone, then write an essay or piece of journalism, write nonfiction. Fiction... should feel as if you're living these things when you read or watch them. If you're so distanced by it that a character dies and you don't care, then to an extent the author has failed.'
George R R Martin, whose epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire has been made into a hugely successful tv series, Game of Thrones, and which still has two more volumes to come, in the Observer.
'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. Now you are ready to sub your first work.
Criticism is hard to take at first. Trust me, I've been there. But learn to think of crit marks as a knife. Each one is designed to cut away the bad and leave a scar. Scars prove you've lived, learned and walked away a winner. Any writer who tells you they don't need edits is lying. I don't care if they have 100 books out. Edits make you grow and if you aren't growing as a writer, you are dead.'
Inez Kelley, author of Turn it Up, Myla by Moonlight, Jinxed and five other romance novels
Do genre writers receive adequate respect from the literary establishment?
‘Everything's upside down. They assume that to do something that appeals to a huge audience is somehow easier than to do something that appeals to a tiny audience. Because we do a book a year people think you just crank a handle and out it comes. All my peers are smart, intelligent, well-informed, interested in the world; everybody puts in a huge amount of effort. It's not easy to do. This peculiar assumption that it is needs to be laid to rest. As Henry James said, "Easy reading is hard writing."'
Jack Reacher and the ageing problem:
‘I think I'll do whatever I want, but I assume the reader is gonna give me a free pass. The reader always does anyway in terms of how you get into the story, which is always difficult for Reacher because he doesn't have any official role. It's always some coincidence. The reader says, "OK, I'll buy that, but the rest of it better be convincing." And it always is.'
Lee Child, author of 36 novels, including the highly successful Jack Reacher series and ranging from Blue Moon to Killing Floor in The Times magazine https://www.leechild.com/
‘What really annoys me'
‘What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering - that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some total stranger! If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.'
Margaret Drabble, author of 20 novels, including The Dark Flood Rises, A Summer Bird-Cage, The Needle's Eye and The Ice Age.
'Thirty-five years'
‘Before the actual placing of words on pages, The Testaments was written partly in the minds of the readers of its predecessor, The Handmaid's Tale, who kept asking what happened after the end of that novel. Thirty-five years is a long time to think about possible answers, and the answers have changed as society itself has changed and as possibilities have become actualities. The citizens of many countries, including the United States, are under more stress now than they were three decades ago.'
Margaret Atwood, author of The Testaments, The Handmaid's Tale, Lady Oracle, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace and 12 other novels, as well as poetry books, children's books and non-fiction, in the Sunday Times' Culture. http://margaretatwood.ca/
'One extra day'
‘When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation?
Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute?'
Dan Simmons, author of 37 horror, science fiction, fantasy and historical novels and collections of short stories, including Drood, Hyperion and The Terror.
'The dark side is rising'
‘The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion - not to look around and say, "Look at yourselves, you idiots!," but to say, "This is who we are." ‘
Anne Lamott, author of seven non-fiction books, and the forthcoming Hallelujah Anyway, and two novels, Imperfect Birds and Rosie.
'The most dangerous profession'
‘I had always wanted to be a writer as a child but couldn't spell out this dream to myself because during the Cultural Revolution all writers were condemned. To be a writer was the most dangerous profession. I wrote my first poem aged 16 and destroyed it. When I was working spreading manure in the paddy fields aged 16 and 17, I was always writing in my head. In my home town there was a black market selling books that had been banned. My 13-year-old brother was very entrepreneurial. He made money dealing Mao badges and used it to buy books, which he hid in a hole he dug in the garden... My father loved writing and encouraged us to write diaries. But I had to destroy my diary in the revolution.'
Jung Chang, author of the bestselling Wild Swans, Empress Dowager Cixi (with Jon Halliday) Mao The Untold Story and the just-published Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister, about the sisters who helped shape modern China, in the Observer. http://www.jungchang.net/
'I like third person'
‘First of all, I'm always writing from a point of view. I decide what the purpose of the scene is, and at least begin with some purpose. But, even more important, from whose point of view is this scene seen? Because then the narrative will take on somewhat the sound of the person who is seeing the scene...
I like third person. I don't want to be stuck with one character's viewpoint because there are too many viewpoints. And, of course, the bad guys' viewpoints are a lot more fun. What they do is more fun. A few years ago, a friend of mine in the publishing business called up and said, "Has your good guy decided to do anything yet?"'
Elmore Leonard, author of 45 novels, including Fifty-two Pickup, The Switch, Freaky Deaky, Get Shorty and Cuba Libre http://www.elmoreleonard.com/index.php
'What happened after the end of that novel'
‘Before the actual placing of words on pages, The Testaments was written partly in the minds of the readers of its predecessor, The Handmaid's Tale, who kept asking what happened after the end of that novel. Thirty-five years is a long time to think about possible answers, and the answers have changed as society itself has changed and as possibilities have become actualities. The citizens of many countries, including the United States, are under more stresses now than they were three decades ago.'
Margaret Atwood, author 17 novels, including The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, which is shortlisted for this year's Booker Prize, in the Sunday Times Culture. http://margaretatwood.ca/
'Genre writers have a greater responsibility'
‘I first thought Reacher would appeal mostly to men. But the majority of my readers are women, which is really interesting. Even in the 21st century, women struggle to express themselves, they have to shout that much louder. It is usually women who are busier at work, holding families together, making the tough decisions. So I think they strongly identify with the fantasy of walking away from commitments. And being able to kick the crap out of other people...
I only really care about my readers. But I've always been irritated by the lazy assumption among critics that what I do is somehow easier than what ‘literary' novelists do. It's actually quite the reverse - to write something to please millions is obviously harder than doing something that only has to please thousands. I also think that genre writers have a greater responsibility. A literary reader has no expectation that everything they read is going to be great. If you pick up the latest Julian Barnes and it doesn't work, you go on to the next one. Many genre readers read one or two books a year - give them a bad book and they may stop reading altogether.'
Lee Child, author of the 23 Jack Reacher novels, most recently Past Tense, in Books magazine https://www.leechild.com/