Ask the Author: Simon Chesterman
Answered Questions (4)
Simon Chesterman
Write! And read! Read widely, read what inspires and challenges you. Then write some more. Then read again. Repeat.
Simon Chesterman
A colleague has a great metaphor of writing as jigsaw puzzle. When you do a complex jigsaw, you don't start on the left and just work your way to the right. You find easy bits - corners, edges, points of detail, flashes of colour - and you do those bits while at the same time having a sense of the whole. So if I get blocked at one point, I jump to another and keep going.
Simon Chesterman
The inspiration for my fiction comes in part from having children and being fascinated by the nature/nurture question of their development. It also comes from being a university professor and wanting to explore the extent to which teachers (as well as parents) have an impact on the intellectual and moral growth of the young men and women who pass through our doors. "Raising Arcadia" gives me the licence to explore these questions without being constrained unduly by reality...
Simon Chesterman
My luxury writing project is the third and final installment of the Raising Arcadia trilogy: Being Arcadia. That's in addition to my day job as a law professor, for which I'm working on two Oxford Handbooks (on UN Treaties and International Law in the Asia Pacific) and a revised edition of a book on data protection law in Singapore.
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