Ask the Author: Barry Walsh
Answered Questions (6)
Barry Walsh
It was prompted by my editor at HarperCollins who thought another London in the 60s would be good. While I hadn't planned to write this book at the time, ( I was working on something very different) I had more than enough material to draw on. At first, it didn't have the 'I have to write this book' drive that came with the first book, but like the line in Mamas and the Papas song, 'it just started quietly and grew'. Now I love the characters.
Barry Walsh
When I 'get' great authors like, say, Virginia Woolf I feel a little more intelligent and keen to write myself. Occasionally, out of nowhere, I get surprising bursts of confidence that the stories I could tell are worth telling; this gets me writing but not always on my novel.
Barry Walsh
A novel with a working title of Love Me Do. Set in London a little later in the 60s than my first novel. It's about late teenagers struggling to find love against a background of a not-so-swiwnging part of London.
Barry Walsh
One thing that helped me was the incentive of producing a chapter each week for a small group of trusted fellow writers. And reading my work out loud helped to impale many bits of poor writing. Read, read, read great books even if they're difficult. I found Woolf and Faulkner hard at first but goodness what rewards for seeing them through!
Barry Walsh
The moments when I write something good enough to believe that come the final version of the book, it will still be there.
Barry Walsh
I rarely suffer from it. I do suffer from what could be deemed bouts of laziness, followed by solid guilt-driven periods of writing.
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