This week, I am in two places at once. I’ve finally achieved what I’ve been trying to do for months – do two things at the same time, while only doing one thing. It’s a miracle – unlike my eyebrows. But what has this all got to do with a writers’ office Christmas party?
Having spent most of this year looking for who is to blame for the state of today’s book market and the lamentable fate of authors, nobody was more surprised than me to find out that I was at least partly responsible. Still, thankfully you can’t prove anything these days, least of all my arguments.
It’s harder than ever to get published by writing original fiction. So why bother? Why not just reimagine a proven bestseller with a tweak of genre, or a change of setting, and call it your own? If it works in politics…
So how about writing The Bourne Identity as a lifestyle thriller set in IKEA? What if fans of Stephen King wanted to see his take on YA Romance? Would The Hunger Games work as a diet book?
Holiday reading lists are ridiculous. They are lists of books people haven’t read yet, and therefore full of books people won’t ever actually read. Authors are particular culprits, promoting their own books by lying about their intentions to read those written by other people. But are the rest of us mortal folk missing out on a trick? Not being quoted in newspapers doesn’t mean we can’t also go around lying about what we’re reading this summer. Why should authors have all the fun?
Every writer with a day job dreams of writing full-time. It’s the holy grail of writerdom. But what’s it really like? Is the reality different from the dream? And what is it going to mean for your bathroom?
The Secret Actress is currently writing anonymously for the Guardian newspaper about the stuff nobody will admit publicly in Hollywood. It’s time for The Secret Author to do the same for the writing community. Are you the next online Superhero?
Help! Overwhelming success is ruining my legacy! Or at least it might, had I any actual success to speak of. As of right now, I have to say my legacy is looking fairly safe. But the other day, as I was perusing the all-powerful culture sections of the broadsheets, a thought suddenly struck me. Are successful authors derided…
Well… kind of. Back in January, I wrote a pre-emptive review of what was going to happen in 2014. Like most psychics, I was unassailably confident about my foresight. Now, the naysayers amongst you – the doom-mongerers and pedants – might say that I got absolutely everything wrong. But that is simply not true. The fact…
Yup. That’s what I said, folks. Unbelievable. The Irish government issued its annual budget on Tuesday. In it, there were plenty of teeny-tiny measures to please almost everybody just a teeny-tiny bit, but nothing targeted at the artistic community, or at writers in particular. I reckon the government missed a trick here (particularly if, as I suspect, every second…
There was no blogging to be had last week, because there was nothing I could write about. Sometimes things happen in real life which make pretty much everything else pointless. It seems to me that writing, or indeed the making of any art, might be helpful for understanding the human condition, but only after you’ve already understood it. It’s no good at…
Tara Sparling writes 