Ask the Author: Colette Coen
Answered Questions (5)
Colette Coen
Five a Day is a book of short stories, but the title story is my most autobiographical piece to date. I've been plagued by sensitive skin and eczema all my life, but I struggled to find a way into the topic. Then one day I was trawling my memory of the 1970s and my family's relationship with fruit came to mind - and how my love of satsumas was blamed on a particularly bad flare up. And so I was in.
Colette Coen
Stories do just come into my head when I'm going about my everyday life, but I also use inspiration sites for creative writing that give weekly prompts just to push the imagination into places it might not necessarily go.
I've also got years' worth of notebooks that I flick through when I've nothing else to write, and often a couple of ideas come together and can be drafted into something resembling a story.
I've also got years' worth of notebooks that I flick through when I've nothing else to write, and often a couple of ideas come together and can be drafted into something resembling a story.
Colette Coen
As always I've got a few irons in the fire. I've been getting on with self-publishing and blogging while also working on a radio play, and the novel is simmering on my mind's back burner. There are also a couple of competitions which I'm planning to enter, so I'm letting the themes germinate just now.
Colette Coen
Nothing beats persistence. I know writers who get one knockback and are deflated for months (in fact I used to be like that), now I just brush myself down and get on with things.
It also seems like an obvious thing to say, but a story in your head is only that - you have to get it down on paper if you want to be a writer.
It also seems like an obvious thing to say, but a story in your head is only that - you have to get it down on paper if you want to be a writer.
Colette Coen
Letting your characters go anywhere and do anything. I love how you can get totally immersed in imaginary scenarios.
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