Iain Banks' Advice

What advice would science fiction novelist Iain Banks give to new writers?

The Three Ps: practice, practice, practice. Writing is like everything else: the more you do it the better you get. Don't try to perfect as you go along, just get to the end of the damn thing. Accept imperfections. Get it finished and then you can go back. If you try to polish every sentence there's a chance you'll never get past the first chapter.

And when asked if there's a secret to writing he says:

Some people have just got it and some haven't. Although, I think it can be brought out of some people so it is worthwhile joining writers' groups or studying it. If a creative writing course produces one writer who wouldn't have been a writer otherwise then it's worthwhile. You kind of know if you are a writer or not. The real secret is to do it because you love writing rather than because you love the idea of being a Writer.

Book Snobbery

Glenda writes about how genre fiction (and fantasy fiction) is looked down upon by the self-appointed guardians of literature.

She slips in a nice quote from David Langford's March edition of his sci-fi newsletter Ansible in which he talks about UK writer, Iain Banks, who writes both 'literary' works and science-fiction:

Iain Banks's new book... is variously described. An invitation to the related `The Herald Sunday Herald Book Series' event calls it `his first literary novel in almost five years' -- as distinct from illiterary novels like The Algebraist (2004)? ... Private Eye's phrasing is `Banks's first "proper" novel (as opposed to the sci-fi stuff he turns out under the name of Iain M. Banks) for five years.' ... And Radio 4's Saturday Review, after acknowledging this author's habit of alternating the `terrestrial' and the `intergalactic', went on to say: `The Steep Approach to Garbadale is his first novel for five years ...'

Glenda has her own interesting tale of prejudice closer to home:

When I first had books published in Australia, they were unavailable in Malaysia, because I couldn't interest the publisher's distributor in supplying them to book shops here - Australian books, he said, were too expensive for the Malaysian market.

But I was being well-reviewed in Malaysian newspapers, so I approached a bookshop in Bangsar. I also wanted a bookshop I could send people to when they asked where to buy copies. I offered the proprietor a win-win solution. I was willing to supply the books, and he didn't have to pay me until they were sold. He refused the offer, and told me that he didn't stock non-literary works and the kind of people who read 'those' kind of books (i.e. trashy fantasy?) didn't come into his shop anyway.

While saying goodbye to him, a customer caught sight of the sample book I had brought along, started talking to me - and bought the book from me, right there in the shop where 'people who read those kind of books' weren't supposed to shop, right under the nose of the proprietor.

The next time I was in that bookshop, I saw he had copies of Harry Potter all over the place.

I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said "There are only good books and bad books."

Go and grab a book in a genre you don't normally read, today!