Ask the Author: Holly Müller
Answered Questions (6)
Holly Müller
It is confidence-related, I'm sure, and often linked to perfectionism and unrealistic expectations of yourself. I keep a journal alongside any creative project where I jot down thoughts, research and information, reflect on books I'm reading, draft scenes and flesh our characters. In the journal, I include moaning or frustrated entries about how I can't seem to get writing today. From this, quite often I loosen up and begin to craft a scene. It is all about overcoming under-confidence and forcing oneself to begin. A useful piece of advice is that the enemy of the good book is the perfect book.
Holly Müller
The way writing helps me interact with the world in a very intense way - some call it developing the 'writer's eye'. I often find myself simultaneously hyper-alert to things around me but also in a dreamlike state of creativity. It feels like unravelling in the best possible way, like taking a swim in a warm ocean - I suppose it's about freedom of thought.
Holly Müller
Read ravenously; write regularly. Make friends with other writers because they will be good company and support you and keep you inspired. Go to literary event to achieve this, and to become part of the writing community.
Persevere and don't be afraid to emulate the style of writers you admire at first; you'll soon develop your unique voice but mimicry is a great way to learn and develop.
Persevere and don't be afraid to emulate the style of writers you admire at first; you'll soon develop your unique voice but mimicry is a great way to learn and develop.
Holly Müller
I'm beginning my second novel set in a 1970s hippie commune - I'm keeping a multitude of notebooks, and drawing timelines, and revolving this whole new world round and round in my head all the time, looking at it from every angle, filling in the gaps, like a big 3D puzzle. I love this feeling, of total privacy and expectation. Soon it will exist and then it will be out there, but for now it is just my own joyful, energising preoccupation.
Holly Müller
I think I listen out for stories all the time; I seem to process the world and understand other people in this way. And for reasons I can't explain, I have a very strong urge to observe details all around me, record them, and spin them together in to fiction. It is to do with wanting to share my impressions, and to convey what I think matters in life. I keep many tiny notebooks and whenever I hear, see or think of something that intrigues, amuses, revolts or moves me, I write it down. Music also inspires me a lot - it takes me in to a very creative frame of mind and I get all exhilarated and ready to make something.
Holly Müller
My Own Dear Brother germinated from a rather dark short story I wrote called 'Krampus' about the Austrian Alpine demon Krampus who accompanies Saint Nikolaus in early December to punish bad children in their homes. A whole world began to unfold and the characters - Ursula, Schosi and Anton - wanted more space to live out their difficult stories. I drew on my family background and their history to write this book; I'm half Austrian, and there was much I needed to learn and understand about the ambiguities and silences within my family, about Austria's Nazi past and about the terrible disruption that came with the arrival of the occupying Soviet troops after the Third Reich fell.
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