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Justin Brown

Do not search Amazon for the book you haven’t written yet

posted on October 26, 2012 by in Wordy advice

Brilliant. Among Roddy Doyle’s ten rules for writers :

Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph

Do give the work a name as quickly as possible. Own it, and see it. Dickens knew Bleak House was going to be called Bleak House before he started writing it. The rest must have been easy.

Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments.

Do not search amazon.co.uk for the book you haven’t written yet.

What every writer’s career looks like

posted on October 25, 2012 by in Wordy advice

Never meet your heroes – unless it’s Lee Child

posted on October 24, 2012 by in Wordy advice

This is Lee and I in the green room at the Ellerslie Racecourse in Auckland. I was emceeing and he was the main attraction. That’s a new suit he’s wearing, one of two he bought that day. His story of being fired at forty and going on to write one of the bestselling series ever was inspiring. He told me his real name (Jim Grant) and the reason he chose a surname starting with ‘C.’ (‘Because buyers don’t generally go for the surname ‘A’ in the bookstore and ‘Z’ is too far to reach.’) He was fine company, had a healthy, cynical British wit and welcomed the Chuck Norris jokes I had switched for Jack Reacher. ‘Write fiction,’ he said, as he lit a smoke and walked to his car at the end of the night. We interviewed him on our radio show recently and I told him my new novel was coming out. ‘That is great news,’ he said. ‘Please send me a copy.’