Ask the Author: David Murrow
Answered Questions (3)
David Murrow
1) Avoid clichés like the plague.
2) Say it in the fewest possible words.
3) Don't over-describe. Leave 75% of what you write to the readers' imagination.
4) 'Show, don't tell'. I find this arguably the most difficult thing when writing.
5) Edit your work. And when you're done editing, go back and edit it again.
6) Make sure your 'shit detector' is well oiled.
7) Never write for an audience. Only write for yourself.
8) Write about what you don't know to keep yourself engaged and educated. Wikipedia is your best tool.
9) Stock up on good coffee.
10) Writing stoned helps you be creative. Writing drunk always ends in disaster.
11) Give up your day job.
2) Say it in the fewest possible words.
3) Don't over-describe. Leave 75% of what you write to the readers' imagination.
4) 'Show, don't tell'. I find this arguably the most difficult thing when writing.
5) Edit your work. And when you're done editing, go back and edit it again.
6) Make sure your 'shit detector' is well oiled.
7) Never write for an audience. Only write for yourself.
8) Write about what you don't know to keep yourself engaged and educated. Wikipedia is your best tool.
9) Stock up on good coffee.
10) Writing stoned helps you be creative. Writing drunk always ends in disaster.
11) Give up your day job.
David Murrow
I attempted a novel in my early twenties, Eight Days in May, which remains unpublished, because it's not good enough. But the premise is good and is being used for the novel I am working on today, called Inland Island. I can't really say too much about it without giving away massive spoilers which is going to make marketing the book very difficult. If I ever finish the bloody thing that is.
David Murrow
When I finished uni I continued to work on an embryonic novel that began as an assignment. It came about after I went to what was dubbed the 'Financial Fool's Day' demonstrations in 2009 where I witnessed anarchists no older than teenagers fighting with police. This novel grew over the next seven years to become The Order of Chaos, published in 2016. I studied a comedy module at university in which we discussed the concept of bisociation: “The simultaneous mental association of an idea or object with two fields ordinarily not regarded as related.” Much of the comedy in the book stems from this idea: the anarchist working in a bank, for example, or the Black homophobe sparring with the gay racist, which is itself intended to magnify the folly of prejudice. The squat in the novel was influenced in part by a house in which I lived in Leyton. You would be cooking in the kitchen and water would be dripping from the light-fitting onto your head. Once I was cooking in a frying pan and left the room briefly before hearing a thunderous bang; I came back into the kitchen to see that half the ceiling had fallen down from the weight of the water. Close call. A girl who was crashing on the sofa tried to burn the place down in the end so we had to move out. Crazy times. She committed suicide a few weeks later, sadly. Actually the character Foxy from The Order of Chaos was based loosely on her.
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