Posted by on Jan 19, 2009 in sustainable writing careers | 4 Comments

Why Robert McCrum is wrong (partly) Riffing on Diana Athill and her memoir published age 91, he says that ‘Old people, in general, don’t have literary careers.’ Well yes and no. He then points out some of the exceptions: Daniel Defoe first published aged 59. Mary Wesley first published aged 71. William Golding banging out […]

Dealing with writing rejection (aka on robustness) A former student emailed me to point out that I might have sounded less than empathetic in my last post. While it’s true that I think you must be robust to cope with life as a fiction writer, I’m not unsympathetic (at least I hope I’m not) to […]

A sustainable career in writing I notice that JA Konrath has a New Year’s Resolution thread on his blog: A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. It’s not often I disagree with JA, but I have something of a hatred of the ‘resolution’ process and its results. The main reason for this is that I’ve been lucky […]