The word from the new editorial regime at The Author is that the team has to buck up its ideas. There’s too much gloom in our pages, for a start. The emphasis from here on is going to swing towards a sunny, positive vibe. Members of the editorial committee have been instructed to answer their… Continue reading On developing your public image
Read moreFor some reason, attending to practical matters seems to bring the more sensitive kind of author out in hives. While the most complex literary conundrum causes him no problem at all, the need to change a light-bulb can bring on an artistic crisis. What does the light bulb feel about this? Won’t changing it alter… Continue reading On solving the practical problems of an author’s life
Read moreThe distinguished author was in a bad mood. He had always been a writer who had presented serious themes with a pronounced comic swing but these days, he said, publishers had decided that it was commercial death to suggest in a blurb that a novel might be humorous. ‘Uplifting’, ‘savage’, heart-breaking’, ‘coruscating’: these were the… Continue reading On being promoted by a pair of underpants
Read moreI was in one of those profound creative reveries which take the form of watching in very great detail what is happening on the bird-table outside my office window, when the telephone rang. It was a distant cousin from whom I had not heard for some time and he was wondering whether I could help… Continue reading On being a dinner-party novelist
Read moreAuthors in America are facing a new problem. Those who are considering earning their living by trying a different genre – an established thriller writer with an idea for a children’s book, for example – runs the risk of suffering from what publishers now describe as “brand disintegration”. The brand that is their work and… Continue reading On the illnesses of authors
Read moreThe literary world can sometimes be surprisingly generous with the little rewards and favours it bestows. Stick around for long enough, be seen at the right festivals and parties, avoid hitting critics or sleeping with the wives of publishers while allowing a dribble of publications to issue forth under your name, and eventually you will… Continue reading On teaching a creative writing course
Read moreSome authors believe that the modern publishing world is a cold, mercantile place whose typical inhabitant is a lizard-like character of indeterminate sex, with calculator eyes, a credit card for a heart and an emotional life as carefully controlled and sponsored as a Waterstone’s display window. There may be an element of truth there but,… Continue reading On the unexplained mysteries of the writing life
Read moreIt was a glorious autumn day when I set out from the Endpaper office, strewn with the detritus of the literary life – old copies of theLondon Review of Books, invitations to launch parties, scraps of half-completed poems – and headed southwards towards Sussex. My quest was for nothing less than for a glimpse of… Continue reading On meeting a grand old bookman
Read moreThere comes a moment when the excitements of buzzing literary gossip become wearisome, and the yearning for golden critical opinions, mind-boggling sales, perhaps the odd little prize, begins to fade. You are a writer. Your basic needs are simple. You want to be left alone to write stories, and then be paid for them by… Continue reading On some useful attributes for a writer
Read moreWriting isn’t life, you know. When you lay down your pen, perhaps having received a rejection note so brutal that not even you can construe it as actually rather positive in its way, the world keeps on turning. In many ways, the life of an ex-, dormant or would-be writer is every bit as varied… Continue reading On writers who prefer to rest
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