I was impressed by the useful tips of this bright lady:
P.D. James'
top 10 tips for being a writer .
Although she didn't publish
her first novel until she was 42, Phyllis Dorothy James had been writing since
childhood.
Now a celebrated crime writer, she has penned more
than 20 books, including The Children Of Men, and the Adam Dalgliesh mystery series.
At the age of 93, she says she wants to write just one
more detective novel.
Here are her top 10 tips for being an author.
1. You must be born to write
You can't teach someone to know how to use words
effectively and beautifully. You can help people who can write to write more
effectively and you can probably teach people a lot of little tips for writing
a novel, but I don't think somebody who cannot write and does not care for
words can ever be made into a writer. It just is not possible.
Nobody could make me into a musician. Somebody might
be able to teach me how to play the piano reasonably well after a lot of
effort, but they can't make a musician out of me and you cannot make a writer,
I do feel that very profoundly.
2. Write about what you know
You absolutely should write about what you know. There
are all sorts of small things that you should store up and use, nothing is lost
to a writer. You have to learn to stand outside of yourself. All experience,
whether it is painful or whether it is happy is somehow stored up and sooner or
later it's used.
I love situations where people are thrown together in
unwelcome proximity. where all kinds of reprehensible emotions can bubble up. I
think you must write what you feel you want to write because then the book is
genuine and that comes through.
I believe that someone who can write, who has a
feeling for words and knows how to use them will find a publisher. Because
after all, publishers do still need to find new writers. We all get old and we
die and that's that and there have to be successors.
3. Find your own routine
I think all we writers are different. It's
interesting, isn't it, how different we are?
Some people have to have the room, the pen and others
do everything on a computer. I write by hand and I can write more or less
anywhere as long as I've got a comfortable chair, a table, an unlimited amount
of biros to write with and lined paper to write on. And then the next day when
my PA comes, which she does at 10 o'clock, then I've got quite a lot to dictate
to her and she puts it on to the computer, prints it out and I do the first
revision.
In a sense, therefore, I revise as I go. It's
important to get up early - before London really wakes and the telephone calls
begin and the emails pile up. This is the best time for me, the time of quiet
in the morning,
4. Be aware that the business is changing
Goodness gracious, how the world of publishing has
changed! It is much easier now to produce a manuscript with all the modern
technology. It is probably a greater advantage now, more than ever before, to
have an agent between you and the publisher.
Everything has changed and it's really quite
astonishing, because people can self-publish now. I would once have thought
that that was rather a self-defeating way of doing it but actually publishers
do look at what is self-published and there are examples of people picking up
very lucrative deals.
5. Read, write and don't daydream!
To write well, I advise people to read widely. See how
people who are successful and good get their results, but don't copy them. And
then you've got to write! We learn to write by writing, not by just facing an
empty page and dreaming of the wonderful success we are going to have. I don't
think it matters much what you use as practice, it might be a short story, it
might be the beginning of a novel, or it might just be something for the local
magazine, but you must write and try and improve your writing all the time. Don't
think about it or talk about it, get the words down.
6. Enjoy your own company
It is undoubtedly a lonely career, but I suspect that
people who find it terribly lonely are not writers. I think if you are a writer
you realise how valuable the time is when you are absolutely alone with your
characters in complete peace. I think it is a necessary loneliness for most
writers - they wouldn't want to be always in the middle of everything having a
wonderful life. I've never felt lonely as a writer, not really, but I know
people do.
7.
Choose a good setting
Something always sparks off a novel, of course. With
me, it's always the setting. I think I have a strong response to what I think
of as the 'spirit of a place'. I remember I was looking for an idea in East
Anglia and standing on a very lonely stretch of beach. I shut my eyes and
listened to the sound of the waves breaking over the pebble shore. Then I
opened them and turned from looking at the dangerous and cold North Sea to look
up and there, overshadowing this lonely stretch of beach was the great, empty,
huge white outline of Sizewell nuclear power station. In that moment I knew I
had a novel. It was called Devices and Desires.
8. Never go anywhere without a notebook
Never go anywhere without a notebook because you can
see a face that will be exactly the right face for one of your characters, you
can see place and think of the perfect words to describe it. I do that when I'm
writing, I think it's a sensible thing for writers to do.
I've written little bits of my next novel, things that
have occurred to me. I've got the setting already. I've got the title, I've got
most of the plot and I shall start some serious writing of it next month, I
think.
9. Never talk about a book before it is
finished
I never talk about a book before it is finished and I
never show it to anybody until it is finished and I don't show it to anybody
even then, except for my publisher and my agent. Then there is this awful time until they phone.
I'm usually pretty confident by the time I've sent it
in but I have those moments when I think, 'well I sent it to them on Friday, by
Saturday night they should be ringing up to say how wonderful it is!'
I'm always aware that people might have preferences
and think that one book is better than another.
10. Know when to stop
I am lucky to have written as many books as I have,
really, and it has been a joy. With old age, it becomes very difficult. It
takes longer for the inspiration to come, but the thing about being a writer is
that you need to write.
What I am working on now will be another detective
story, it does seem important to write one more. I think it is very important
to know when to stop.
Some writers, particularly of detective fiction, have
published books that they should not have published. I don't think my publisher
would let me do that and I don't think my children would like me to. I hope I
would know myself whether a book was worth publishing. I think while I am
alive, I shall write. There will be a time to stop writing but that will
probably be when I come to a stop, too.
By Alison Feeney-Hart © BBC News
I'm sure
all the rights are reserved 2013
Gavi Mensch
9-8-2013
.
