Ask the Author: Jakob Melander
Answered Questions (3)
Jakob Melander
Two things: First of all read!! Read everything, the great russian novelist, thrashy science fiction, Proust, commercials, the text on serial boxes. Some day you'll discover that you can use all of it.
Then write! When I was a teenager, apart from dabbling in punk rock, playing rock'n roll and reading comic books plus all of the above mentioned, I was also drawing. A lot. This was in the late seventies/early eighties. At that time there was a very popular book, called To Draw is to See. In this book the writer said: Draw and sketch as much as you can, 'cause we all have a million bad drawings inside us. The thing is to draw them to get them out, so we can start drawing all the good ones! So even if you think your work sucks, you'll learn from it, and if you're persistent, eventually you will have written you share of bad work and get on with writing the good stuff.
Oh, and remember: Hemmingway supposedly said "The first draft of anything is shit!" I mean, if he could say that, you and I maybe shouldn't be too intimidated if our first drafts aren't spot on!
Then write! When I was a teenager, apart from dabbling in punk rock, playing rock'n roll and reading comic books plus all of the above mentioned, I was also drawing. A lot. This was in the late seventies/early eighties. At that time there was a very popular book, called To Draw is to See. In this book the writer said: Draw and sketch as much as you can, 'cause we all have a million bad drawings inside us. The thing is to draw them to get them out, so we can start drawing all the good ones! So even if you think your work sucks, you'll learn from it, and if you're persistent, eventually you will have written you share of bad work and get on with writing the good stuff.
Oh, and remember: Hemmingway supposedly said "The first draft of anything is shit!" I mean, if he could say that, you and I maybe shouldn't be too intimidated if our first drafts aren't spot on!
Jakob Melander
I'm currently working on the third book in the series. I've finished the first draft of the book, and right now I've put it aside until the middle of August to be able to read and edit it with a fresh approach. That always seems to work well for me. Somehow the subconscious molds and thrashes the story around when I'm not directly working on it, coming up with new, fresh and better solutions to the problems the text poses, than my Id could have done:)
Jakob Melander
The idea to Serafine, The Scream of the Butterfly in English, stems from a mental image I carried around for some time. The lord mayor of Copenhagen lying murdered in a flat in Copenhagen. At his side is a very sad prostitute. Who is she? Why is she so sad? And how did these two people chance to meet? Those were the questions I kept asking myself, and gradually these questions and their answers, that again fed other questions, grew to the novel that became latest installment in the Lars Winkler-series.
The idea to Serafine, The Scream of the Butterfly in English, stems from a mental image I carried around for some time. The lord mayor of Copenhagen lying murdered in a flat in Copenhagen. At his side is a very sad prostitute. Who is she? Why is she so sad? And how did these two people chance to meet? Those were the questions I kept asking myself, and gradually these questions and their answers, that again fed other questions, grew to the novel that became latest installment in the Lars Winkler-series.
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