Write for....

[Paul Whybrow]

Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you'll mostly fall flat on your face, because it's impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That's how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It's hard work.

Wilbur Smith

 

[Pamela Jo]

The correlation between gardening and writing becomes ever more apparent as we move into spring. You don't plant-you get nothing. Don't weed-the good stuff is choked before it gets a chance to flower. Then there are the predatory insects of doubt and self indulgence that must be picked off before they can devour the fruits of your labor. After all of that you have to find the right market niche for your genre of broccoli. We Have a Creativity Problem

 

[RG Worsey]

What gets me is when writers say they never read. I don't mean writers who are too busy at the moment, who haven't read one for a few months... I mean ones who are working on a novel, who never actually read novels. At all.

It strikes me as really odd.

 

[E G Logan]

I think ol' Wilbur was being a bit disingenuous here – he had a really good handle on what his readers wanted. It might have been what he wanted to write, too, but first and foremost it was what he knew would sell.

 

[Serra K]

@Pamela Jo You may enjoy this read: The Well Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart-Smith

 

[Pamela Jo]

I think ol' Wilbur was being a bit disingenuous here – he had a really good handle on what his readers wanted. It might have been what he wanted to write, too, but first and foremost it was what he knew would sell.

Yeah. Tried reading something of his once. Lets just say VERY colonial. Sort of Dan Brown goes to Africa.

 

[RG Worsey]

Yeah. Tried reading something of his once. Lets just say VERY colonial. Sort of Dan Brown goes to Africa.

I borrowed one of his novels from a library and felt like I needed to have a set of values in my head that I took for granted, in order to be able to read it. There was an automatic assumption that anybody with strong left-wing values in the story must associate with terrorists, for example, and that all the people at a Rolling Stones gig must be on acid or stoned.

 

[Pamela Jo]

I borrowed one of his novels from a library and felt like I needed to have a set of values in my head that I took for granted, in order to be able to read it. There was an automatic assumption that anybody with strong left-wing values in the story must associate with terrorists, for example, and that all the people at a Rolling Stones gig must be on acid or stoned.

All white men must be tall, broad shouldered, ruggedly handsome and know every calibre of weapon used since the blunderbuss.