I have written about the difficulties of conflicting advice for writers on a number of occasions, but one thing that always crops up everywhere is that you cannot write unless you read. You have to do this all the time, widely and critically, fiction and nonfiction, books, papers, magazines and even blogs.
But why?
Continue reading “Do Writers Need to Read?”
The concluding part of my introduction to The Ugly Man.
http://audioboo.fm/boos/338175-ugly-man-excerpt-3If you listen carefully, you can also hear my mega-creaky chair complaining in the background every time I move.
Here, for your delight and delectation, is a second reading continuing your introduction to The Ugly Man. He does have a name, but you don’t get to know what it is yet.
http://audioboo.fm/boos/338172-ugly-man-excerpt-2In other news, I wrote another guest post for Mslexia, if you would like to have a read.
A couple of people have suggested lately that one way to get more words done is to record myself telling the story rather than taking ages typing it all up.
Whilst doing the whole thing that way would undoubtedly end up as a rather mad sounding stream of consciousness for about 90% of the time, I think there’s a lot to be said for doing some audio excerpts. It means that interested parties can have a listen, and it’s helpful to me to read out what I’ve written because hearing it back will help me decide what works and what doesn’t. I also recently read an article by A L Kennedy pointing out that if you want to find your writing voice, you should probably try speaking in it.
So, here is a wee excerpt about Ingmar, a troll who looks out for our vampire heroine from afar. I think the introduction to his character works quite well in the third person, although at some point his internal thoughts are going to be put out there. But I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it in a Swedish accent without sounding like an awful caricature. At the moment I am leaning to having a different character’s voice or perspective in every chapter, to make it easier for the reader to engage with individual characters.
Incidentally I did four takes of that, so the notion that it’s quicker than typing is somewhat misleading!
12 Books in 12 Months 