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Prizes, Surprises – and Persistence
A week ago I got an email telling me a friend’s first novel had been longlisted for the Booker Prize. The Booker is the pre-eminent prize for literary fiction written in English, and winning it is generally reckoned to be career changing. Just getting as far as the long list is pretty major, especially if, as is the case in question, you have never published a novel before, and it has taken you twenty years to get publisher. It certainly came as a surprise to my friend. Read more “Prizes, Surprises – and Persistence”
Chapter 1. But by the time you reach that stage, you will have done a lot of thinking, a lot of planning, a lot of research. If you’re working with a ghost, you’ll have done hours of interviews and had lots of discussions about what’s going to go in. And of course, if you are working with a ghost writer, that first sentence on the blank page is his/her problem, not yours!