The secret life of a novelist
What is it really like to devote yourself to writing novels?
What is it really like to devote yourself to writing novels?
‘The French language is a woman. And this woman is so beautiful, so proud, so modest, so adventurous, touching, sensual, chaste, noble, crazy, wise… that we love her with all our heart and soul.’ – Anatole France
‘First sentences are doors to worlds.’ – Ursula Le Guin
Should the hero get a chance in the spotlight, or is the heroine the star?
‘I have found that when I am writing something emotional, I must write it the first time directly with hand on paper. Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart.’ So wrote Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones, and I quite agree. For me, handwriting has such soul.
Should an author write the book they think they ought to write, or write the book their heart aches to write?
In our modern world it seems to me that there is a great and powerful need to hurry. If you have a dream, there is no time to waste, we are told: go out there right now and seize hold of your dream! But this is not the only path to a dream; and neither, perhaps, is it the best one.
‘The first meeting of a hero and heroine in a novel: will it be dramatic, or tender, or dreamy, or antagonistic? Whatever the scenario, one ingredient will be key: chemistry…’
I don’t think I ever set out to ‘be a writer’; I just knew from an early age that I wanted to create stories and write them down.
‘Why does a writer write? Why hazard yourself? Each writer has their own answer to this question. Mine lies in my childhood…’
An individual, a maverick, a self-made man; introspective, a thinker; drawn to nature; driven by emotion and deeply impassioned… the heroes of my novels are not just romantic, they’re Romantic in the sense of the literary archetype.
A question I’m commonly asked is: ‘What advice would you give an aspiring romance writer?’ I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject – really, who is? – but the following outlines some of the lessons I’ve learned on my journey from being a little girl who dreamed of writing romance to being a grown woman who really does write romance, every day.
Recently, a memoir caught my eye. Published in February this year, Sounds Like Titanic by Jessica Chicceh Hindman is an account of her time playing the
‘”Each kiss a heart-quake,” wrote Lord Byron, and that is how I envision the first kiss in each novel I write…’
‘I would love to return to each of my story worlds. I would love to tell the stories from different angles and perspectives, go back in time and forward, fill gaps, reimagine – dream it all over again…’
‘To write fiction, to express oneself eloquently and with passion, to set down the words in order – that requires triumph over chaos. But more than that, I think writing demands finding a harmonious way of being with chaos…’
Recently, the BBC published an article entitled ‘Is it time to re-think the love story?’ about a new study into what makes an enduring romance novel. What is it that makes us really fall in love with a romance novel?
This month is NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. All over the world writers commit to writing a novel in a month, and November is a blur of writing, and writing, and writing.
‘True love stories never have endings.’ So wrote American author Richard Bach.
There is a very simple reason I am a writer: I love writing. I love the experience of taking ideas in my imagination and realising them on the page; I love the sense of magic that unfolds as the muse guides the pen; I love to be immersed in a fictional world and to create.
Back in Shakespeare’s day, a writer was expected to copy a classical work; ‘unnecessary invention’ was frowned upon. According to Jack Lynch, in his article ‘The Perfectly Acceptable Practice of Literary Theft: Plagiarism, Copyright, and the Eighteenth Century’, it was only in the 18th century that originality became an ideal. But is this an impossible ideal?
Whenever I release a new book, interviewers commonly ask me about my writing habits – what are my sources of inspiration; do I plan or
I have always enjoyed fiction which offers multiple points of view on a story. It is traditional in the romance genre to tell a story
‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ So wrote the great American poet and author Maya Angelou. Her contemporary Toni Morrison
Readers of my fiction will easily notice a common theme in my writing: passion – between characters, of course, but I hope it is also
Having written novels since my early twenties, I have long considered myself a novelist – a long-form writer. But earlier this week, I was hunting
Sir Winston Churchill, politician and prolific writer, said this of the writing process: Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a
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