Interview with Hailong Hao

Just read an interesting interview with Chinese Canberran author Hailong Has, author of “The Young boy A Cheng” and translator of an edition of Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, on the blog of my favourite writing app, Ulysses. I like Ulysses because it is so clean, and completely without extraneous parts. Their blog is good too.

Check out the interview here.

A New Approach

I have a theory about writing, that I have tested enough times to know works for me. It is summarised by a simple phrase:

Start anywhere and just get on with it.

While this approach always works for me in tackling writing projects in a general sense and knocks blocks on the head, in the specifics of writing fiction I have come up against something of a brick wall using this approach. Something interesting always falls out when I ‘start anywhere’ but the overall fabric of the text lacks structure, and it doesn’t allow me to zero in with focus on a target. Quite the opposite, in fact.

There is a time for structure, and a time for free-form responses: I think my fiction efforts need a little more structure.

As such, I am going to start working through a new approach, one based on my background in design. Before I design anything, I write a brief. This can be a few dot points or an elaborate document, but essentially it is the statement of the problem that needs to be solved. It contains qualitative and quantitative information - the building blocks and constraints that need to be managed in order for the work to take form. When I design I am always responding to a brief. The response can be premature, or overcooked and burdened - getting the timing of the response inception right is a challenge, but that’s ok, it’s a challenge I understand.

I am not sure where this is all leading, but my brief may in fact be a synopsis: the statement of the problem that need solving by my characters. This weekend I will give it a go.

More reading about writing: John Scherber

What this tome lacks in literary gravitas it makes up for in practical advice about banging out a ripping yarn. I am not a snob. I am open to practical, non-high-art advice. Helen Razer once commended a romance writing writer’s festival for being exactly that - irrelevant to art but imbued with lashings of practical advice and wisdom. I am all over that, it is up to the writer to elevate their writing to an art form, and in the meantime discussing what people actually like reading, and how they read, is of some value in my humble opinion.