Write what you don’t know…
About 18 months ago I was at the York Writer’s Festival pitching my book 66 Metres to three agents, who all roundly rejected it. One of them took me aside, and said, ‘Look, this book is about a young Russian woman. You’re not Russian, you’re not a woman, and let’s face it…’ He told me to write about what I knew. I decided to stick to my course instead, and a year later 66 Metres was published by Harper Collins.
But ever since that conversation, it got me thinking about the adage ‘write what you know.’…
On being drunk underwater – nitrogen narcosis
You know that feeling when you’re blissfuly happy, and you feel super-confident? Maybe you’re in love, or high on something? Well, you can get that feeling easily when scuba-diving underwater. It’s called nitrogen narcosis – the narcs – and it can get you killed…
When is a novel finished?
This is a kind of zen koan – a mind-bending unanswerable question – for many authors. But as I’m getting ready to send off my next manuscript, these are the ten questions I ask myself:
- Prose – is it fresh, evocative, vivid, agile? Is it clean, with the occasional sparkle? Are the first five pages as good as they can possible be? Does it have a killer first line? Does the reader get a feel (or at least a hint) for the upcoming conflict in the first few pages?