Q. What makes a writer great?
A. I think unforgettable stories and characters. People talk about beautiful turns of phrases, and lovely writing is a joy to read, but unforgettable characters and wonderful stories makes a writer’s work live on. Dickens created some of the most unforgettable characters in literature, and some amazing stories and so his work lives on, even if people don’t read him — his characters and stories have entered popular culture so deeply that people who’ve never heard of Dickens know Scrooge and Miss Haversham and Fagin.
Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?
A. I think the important thing is to push on. Writers (IMO) tend to give up for two basic reasons — 1) they endlessly tweak and fiddle with the writing, and never get to finish the story. Perfectionism gets in the way. But the best piece of writing advice ever comes from Nora Roberts, also arguably the most prolific and successful writer of popular fiction in the world: “You can fix a bad page but you can’t fix a blank one.” So you need to push on and make yourself finish, even if you think it’s horrible. Then you can either fix it, or work out why it doesn’t work and learn from it. Writing, as with all things, takes practice. Not all the books you write will be publishable — some books have L-plates on them. But often the story idea is good and later, when you’re better at creating the architecture of a novel, you can revisit that early idea.
2) The second reason people don’t finish is…. Continue reading “Interview with best selling author, Anne Gracie (part 2)”
