Ly LO CONG
Discovering who your character truly is, is one of the great joys of fiction writing. There is little better than creating someone from the dust of your imagination. But inventing a character from scratch is not simply a matter of ransacking the low shelves of the nearest fiction-supermarket. Your characters must be real. Full. Complicated.…
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IT is difficult to tell a story about Frank McCourt since the probability is that there’s always someone else around who has a better story to tell — not least Frank himself who could, of course, shape a word better than anyone, and is in all likelihood, right now, making the audience laugh and cry in the vast upstairs.
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There is often a lot of talk about who is your ideal reader. Ultimately it has to be you. You are the one who has to take responsibility for it in the end. You must be prepared to listen to the deepest, most critical part of yourself. When you write something, try to imagine yourself…
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Blurbs are the older writer’s nightmare. Either he does them or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, he’s an asshole. If he does, he’s an asshole too – unless she blurbs yours, whereupon she is an angel, a godsend, a creature divine. But how do you get a blurb in the first place? You beg, you…
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Never say too much in your story or your poem or anywhere else for that matter. Never dictate. (Alas, he dictates). Avoid pointing out what your stories mean. Trust your reader. One of the great rules of writing classes is “Show, Don’t tell.” What this means is that you must guide a reader through unfamiliar…
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You would be amazed by the amount of writers who just do not read. Especially older writers who believe that they are the only ones who deserve to be read. Their reading world shrinks. They believe that they have written enough that they can afford now to come indoors. They close the curtains. They deposit…
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Just because you’ve written a book doesn’t mean that you’ve actually finished a book. A book might take a few years to write, but even after it’s written it still has to be finished. Writing is about 75 percent of the job. There’s the editing. And then there’s the editing. Oh and then there’s the…
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A LONDON nursing home. The shape of a figure beneath the sheets. My grandfather could just about whisper. He wanted a cigarette and a glass of whiskey. “Come up on the bed here, young fella,” he said, gruffly. It was 1975 and I was 10 years old and it would be the first — and probably last — time I’d ever see him. Gangrene was taking him away. He reached for the bottle and managed to light a cigarette. Spittle collected at the edge of his mouth. He began talking, but most of the details of his life had already begun slipping away.
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How old is a young writer? The young writer is any age. Seventeen, sixty, forty-six, who cares. The youngest of young writers always wants that book out before they’re eighteen or at the very latest twenty-five. It’s a noble ambition and not one to be scuppered, but if you don’t make it, don’t fret. Thirty…
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