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Answers to some frequently asked
questions!
When did you
start writing?
When I was seven. I wrote
excruciatingly
dishonest poetry to please my mother. From then on I destroyed
everything I wrote until 1980, when I was 49 and had produced a book on
how to cope with period pain, which I thought might be worthwhile. It
was published by Ebury Press, who were the first publishers I sent it
to. After that and greatly daring I started to write novels.
Do you have
to discipline
yourself to write?
No I don't. It would be a waste
of time
because I'd only write rubbish and have to delete it the next day. I
plan the entire novel and then I can write whatever part of it I like,
whenever I want to, which is usually every day.
Where do you
get your
stories from?
All sorts of places. There are
stories
everywhere, in newspapers, pictures, when I eavesdrop on trains and
buses. Anything that makes me ask questions.
Did you have
a hard time
getting published?
No, I'm afraid I didn't. My
first novel
was asked for by an agent, who sent it to Macdonald/Futura who turned
it into a best seller. You can't have it any easier than that. Wouldn't
happen now, I'm afraid.
How can I
write a best
seller?
I haven't the faintest idea. But
some or
all of these things might help you:- the power to tell a story in such
a compelling way that you grab your audience from the first page: the
ability to create three-dimensional characters: the skill to weave a
credible plot: the emotional and intellectual maturity to create
metaphors, with all that that entails, either on a small scale within
your prose or on a larger scale as part of the basic structure of the
novel itself. Or then again, maybe it's just luck!
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