While not quite on a par with childbirth or interrogation by the Spanish Inquisition, finding your own voice as a writer can nevertheless be an excruciatingly painful process. Because what nobody tells you from the outset is that you suck. All writers suck when they start out. Well, okay, maybe not literary prodigies like Sally Rooney.…
If asked what their novel is about, novice writers either fall completely silent or waffle on for hours. What do you mean, what’s it about? It’s about everything under the sun, its themes are complex, its language rich with accumulated life experience, its pathos is heart breaking… At this point, a bemused but supportive friend…
Unless you’re criminally insane, or Donald Trump, you’re probably not in the habit of talking about yourself in the third person. So it’s no surprise that many writers hate penning an author bio. When I polled Twitter about bio writing recently, the following response seemed to sum up everybody’s feelings perfectly: “I’d rather chew on…
