Creative Writing Glasgow

At Tuesday night’s Creative Writing for Writers class we were discussing revision and editing, and the mindset required to get things just right. With that in mind, listen to this writer talking about the book that changed him: Jonathon Coe’s What a Carve Up!

One passage in particular stands out:

‘If you’re lucky enough to make a living writing books . . . It should be exhausting, horrible. You should be reaching for your furthest corners. You shouldn’t tolerate a single wrong sentence. At the end of the process you should feel like a different person. You should go through your own changes, your own arc, like a character in a novel. How else can you expect people to spend £16.99 on your book?’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04yb7ng

And if you’re impressed with that, try Ronson’s excellent recent article in the New York Times – the world of social media can be a scary place . . .