If we as writers could predict what readers grab on to, we would write it.
Writers are good at plucking out what they need here and there.
All writers are magpies, right? We're always stealing bits from different places and then weaving them into our little nest.
The wonderful thing about being a writer is that everything that happens is grist to the mill.
One of my strengths as a writer is that I'm a good problem-solver. I write these unthinking, ungoverned first drafts. The project for me always is to turn that instinctive stuff into pages that work.
Pathos and poignancy are, to me, tactics and techniques; in my work as a writer, I fetch them from my toolbox and use them as required.
Good stories are not written. They are rewritten.
I feel very protective in the first draft, when all the pieces are coming together. I work in a way that is not linear or chronological at all, even with the short story. I will just be writing bits and pieces, and then when I have all the pieces on the table, that for me is when it feels like the real work begins.
I was depressed about the roles that were on offer, so I had to make my own stories.
When you make work, your goal might not be first and foremost to have as many people as possible see it, but it might be more about honing your craft as a storyteller or making art, but, there's no doubt about it, you want lots of people to see it.
Curating, in the modern sense, is something I gravitate to. Taking different ideas from a bunch of different places and putting them into one place or space, a story that makes sense or a new idea. Everything is remixed and taken from other things to make something new.
