Okay, everyone apart from J.K Rowling’s – but you get the idea. In every career there will ups/downs, broke publishers and deals gone bad. Accept it and write the next sentence. Have fun, that’s the reason you do this, remember?
What every writer’s career looks like
posted on October 25, 2012 by Justin in Wordy advice
Never meet your heroes – unless it’s Lee Child
posted on October 24, 2012 by Justin 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.’
What was I doing?
posted on October 22, 2012 by Justin in Wordy advice
Charles Dickens never had the distraction of Twitter or youtube. How can anyone get any serious writing done when there’s FB to check, online bills to pay, news sites to scour, and Nigerian spam to see to. Not to mention Amazon, CNN, and craigslist to buy the book ‘How to write a bestseller while surfing nothing but rubbish.’ My suggestion, if you’re anything like me, is to grab the Freedom app, which locks you out from online until next time you reboot your computer. No, we shouldn’t need it. Yes, some of us do.
Make them suffer!
posted on October 22, 2012 by Justin in Wordy advice
Some great advice I was given about characters – keep the story simple, make the characters complex. Motivate your characters to make hard choices. Impossible choices. Compelling choices make classic moments. Stephen King goes by the mantra ‘Kill your darlings’ but that’s another kettle of fish. He seems to like killing people (in his books that is.)
Shot, Boom, Score
posted on October 22, 2012 by Justin in Blatant plugs
Very proud to say my first novel for kids is out with Allen and Unwin come Feb, 2013. I’ve been working on it for a while so to receive a pre-copy in the mail was a great feeling. The story is about Toby Gilligan-Flannigan, a boy who hates his name but loves his sport. The latter of which played a major role in my childhood. So did rewards for doing well. I only have to look at my daughter’s face when she wins player of the day with accompanying trophy. From the sideline I’ve also witnessed bribery. ‘Max, pie for a try!’ ‘Olivia, movie ticket for a wicket!’ With Toby in ‘Shot, Boom, Score!’, I wanted to take this theme to a new level. When Toby’s old man offers his son the ultimate prize in return for playing well, class bully Malcolm McGarvy does his utmost to ruin the party. 