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"Yes, the ending was as I planned it." Stephen Poliakoff explained the writing process behind his new thriller, Glorious 39, at his recent Waterstone's signing.
Read the interview with Stephen Poliakoff » -
"One of the most satisfying things about blogging is the immediacy. You think it up, type it out on your keyboard and then publish."
Read more from author Tim Kevan » -
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“It’s a no” – rejection can be swift
The hardest thing for a writer to cope with is rejection. We all pour so much of ourselves into our writing, we invest it with so many of our hopes, that it’s impossible not to take rejection as a personal blow.
So, what should you do? Partly it depends on the form of the rejection. If your work is returned to sender with the flimsiest of covering notes – ‘unfortunately we don’t believe we Read more
Literary agent runs away screaming
Can a simple comment on a submission make a literary agent howl with horror? Yes, absolutely, according to this agent’s guest post:
Let’s start with the science bit – every day by email, post, carrier pigeon and osmosis I receive 10 unsolicited approaches from unrepresented writers out in the big wide literary firmament.
These come from all genres. There’s fiction (from coming-of-age to fin-de-siècle), non-fiction (from ‘My 38 Years As a Bank Manager’ to ‘Mucus – the bodily secretion that changed the world’), poetry (from love poetry to stalker poetry), cookery books and academic texts to verse drama – usually about earwigs taking over the world for some reason. Read more
When do you become a writer?
This guest post from author Thomas E. Kennedy is the first of four, each focusing on a question that has empowered him – and could also empower you – as a writer.
Q: When do you become a writer?
Thomas E. Kennedy: When you’re starting out and have published little, maybe nothing at all yet, it is hard to believe in yourself as a writer. Back when I’d only published two or three stories, although I had been at it for years, when someone asked me what I did, I felt funny claiming to be a writer.
Did I really have to identify myself with the day job that paid my bills even though I considered writing the most important thing I did?
I asked a Read more
Do you ‘diary forward’? I don’t.
Based on its excellent review in The Guardian the week before last, on impulse I rang and booked tickets for The Rivals at the Southwark Playhouse. It was just wonderful, and re-exposure to Mrs Malaprop (played by Celia Imrie) was a delight.
Whereas I have heard actors give the misplaced words greater emphasis, the particular pleasure of Imrie’s performance was that they simply flowed out of her, increasing the sense that the character is entirely unaware of her inappropriate vocabularly; indeed that she remains as relaxed as an ‘allegory on the banks of the Nile’.
The experience set me thinking about other examples of the infelicitous use of language. Read more
What inspires your writing?
Mary Hooper writes for children and young adults. Her historical novels including At the House of the Magician and The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose have a huge fan base, as do her contemporary novels for teenagers.
In my last post, A writer with nothing to write about, I explained how, after writing 20 or so books for young adults, I’d run out of ideas.
Eventually (I already had a book commission to fulfil) my editor suggested a historical book, but I had absolutely no background in history and only a vague idea of what had happened when. I took myself along to Read more
A writer with nothing to write about
A guest post from author Mary Hooper. Mary writes for children and young adults. Her historical novels including At the House of the Magician and The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose have a huge fan base, as do her contemporary novels for teenagers.
I used to write hard-hitting teenage books about modern problems: teenage pregnancy, the dangers of going off to meet internet friends, how to cope with family break-ups and so on – and then, after a good number of years, I ran out of ideas. Everything that could Read more
Games writers play
I run the MA in Publishing at Kingston University and was talking to academics in the Psychology department at UCL recently about the personality profile of writers – I am about to start a sustained research project on the same.
We discussed the kind of pastimes often indulged in by writers – apparently crosswords and Scrabble are particularly popular. In which case, I am a sad disappointment, as I have never liked either. What about you, do Read more
Splicing the strands
A guest post from Derek Neale, Lecturer in Creative Writing at The Open University:
This is the last in my series of blogs, offering some thoughts about how drama might
improve your fiction.
What have James Joyce’s Ulysses and Graham Swift’s novel Last Orders got in common? Not a lot, you might think. But you’d be wrong. The answer is time frame – the action of both is set over a single day.
You may not always want to confine your story to 24 hours, but knowing your Read more
Tell us about your writing zone
Filed under: Authors and Books, Writing Advice
Where do you write? You’ve probably seen those articles in the newspapers about ‘writers’ rooms’. It’s almost as if there’s a magic to the physical space where a writer writes.
Pictures of a writer’s room usually feature personal items: photos pinned to the wall, objects collected on travels, gifts from other writers. Perhaps even, at this time of year, we can imagine a sprig of holly on top of that meaningful ethnic carving that sits shyly on the desk.
All those things are important. I enjoy Read more
Grumpy old literary agent’s Christmas
Every year we go to a friend’s for a Christmas drinks thing – you know the score – the same bunch of people, the same canapés, the same wine and the same easy chat. All good stuff.
Conversation hovers around those safety zones of film (did you see?, wasn’t X great?, have you joined lovefilm? etc), music (do you remember that brilliant album by x?, Radiohead were great at Glastonbury – shame we had to watch it on skyplus etc) and books. Yes books.
Remarkably there are still some people out there who value books and who enjoy the fact they don’t have screens, they don’t require batteries and they can (just about) survive an accidental dip in the bath. All good. I enjoy chatting about all of this but something stopped me cold in my tracks last year. I was Read more
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Buy the 2010 Yearbook
The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook is available at a discounted price from our online bookshop. Get all the info, contacts and advice you could need.On camera: Jon McGregor
"Being longlisted for the Booker Prize changed everything - it was the launchpad for my writing career." Click to view our video with novelist Jon McGregor »
On camera: Justin Cartwright
"Just write... If you're any good you may not know it, but certainly someone else will." Click to view our video with novelist Justin Cartwright »
On camera: Julie Myerson
The novelist and journalist Julie Myerson on how she got that all-important first publishing deal. Click here to view our video exclusive »