Ask the Author: Graham Bullen
Answered Questions (6)
Graham Bullen
Read great writing from others; tune into music that motivates me, or inspires me to imagine scenes or characters that might work; talk about writing with other writers (literary groups etc.) and listen to their work and how they went about creating it.
Graham Bullen
Write, write and write. Its the only way to find out if you genuinely like doing it, and you will only develop your skills by actually writing stuff. If its still all in your head, you're a thinker not a writer. Get it down on paper or on the screen.
I also played a trick on myself to force me to get going... I told a number of close friends and family the I was going to become a writer, thereby forcing me to make it happen to avoid losing face with them.
Whatever works for you, right?
I also played a trick on myself to force me to get going... I told a number of close friends and family the I was going to become a writer, thereby forcing me to make it happen to avoid losing face with them.
Whatever works for you, right?
Graham Bullen
The book I'm working on at the moment, The Puppet Master, came from a holiday with my wife in the Aeolian Islands, just off the north coast of Sicily. We stayed for one night in a hotel in Lipari Town; in the hotel window there was a display of some 19th century puppets, in all their finery, with a couple of pages of background beneath them, written in Italian. Our walking guide kindly translated them for me, and within a day, I was hooked on the idea of exploring the possible lives of a fictional family of touring Puppet Show presenters.
Graham Bullen
75% of the time: sit at the writing desk and make an attempt to push through it, however unsuccessful that might be. The other 25%? Give up almost immediately, and get on with something else practical - sometimes its not thinking consciously about the empty page at all when the ideas start to come.
Graham Bullen
The days when you sit down at the wiring desk with little to no idea where the story is heading, or if any inspiration will come, and then finding that by teatime, you've added perhaps 1500-2000 good-enough words to your draft. And yes, the first draft is always the most fun.
Graham Bullen
I'm currently working on the first draft of a novel set in 16th century Sicily. It's called The Puppet Master, and is narrated by one of the two Cusmano Brothers of Lipari, who become puppeteers at the Viceroy's court in Palermo. It concerns their rise to fame, and the relationship between them and a young Turkish woman called Hadice. Nico, the narrator, looks back over his life and all it's highs and lows.
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