Ask the Author: Rebecca Lloyd
Answered Questions (13)
Rebecca Lloyd
Sorry to have missed this question. I don't get notifications from Goodreads. But the answer to your question anyway is no.
Rebecca Lloyd
Sorry I didn't pick this up. Perhaps I need to link my email with Goodreads, so I can get notifications. But to answer your question, I don't ever have a reading list... that'd feel a bit like school to me! I read what I need to read if I'm doing research for a novel I'm intending to write, and just occasionally, I'll read the work of a writer friend. But there are only so many hours in each day...
Rebecca Lloyd
To the island on which Robinson Crusoe landed, and I would do the opposite to what he did... that is to say 'civilising' the man he found there. Rather, I would ask the man to help me in all matters of living on his island.
Rebecca Lloyd
that sounds like an interesting idea, Rossella. Is the Scot a man or a woman? But either way, it's a ghost and ghost stories are kind of popular at the moment.
Rebecca Lloyd
Certain very strange things that happened to me in Africa which came together as a mystery would be an excellent plot, I think. Thank you for asking that question.
Rebecca Lloyd
I'd have to be much more of a reader to be able to answer this question well. Also the idea having a favorite of anything means that you're in the habit of ranking one idea, experience, character or story maybe above another, and I've never done that as far as I can recall. That's not to say that I don't admire some novels and their writers and despair of others because of course I do. I would find myself hard put though, to remember all the characters out of all the fiction I have read... my brain is probably too sieve-like. I would admire someone whose memory was so good, and it is possible that an avid reader could do. Readers and writers are different animals indeed, our brains function differently. So after all that waffle the real true answer to your question is I can't remember any fictional couples ..... except Ethan Frome and the young girl he fell for in Edith Wharton's novel 'Ethan Frome,' but the reason I remember that is because while some of Edith Wharton's work could be considered a little boring, her writing was very wonderful in that book. So, as a writer, it is the wonderful writing of others that stays with me, rather than the specifics of the characters which would be a lot more interesting to a reader.
Rebecca Lloyd
Rajeev,
the first question to ask yourself is are you still passionate about the ms, its characters and the storyline?
Second question:- how far along in the... novel, is it? ..... are you?
Third question:- how will you feel towards yourself if you give it up?
Fourth question:- do you think it's any good?
I think without contemplating those questions you don't really have a starting point. But say you were three quarters of the way through a novel that you think is good so far, but it is now boring to you and you can't get motivated to begin again, in that case I'd try to make the effort to spend no more than 2 hours a day working on it to start with, and no more than 4 when you got back into it and that way try to reach the end.
However, if it's a novel that you've lost interest in and have no big feelings for, start a new one, put that old one in the drawer and see if you might bring it to life again one day in the future. I've got quite a few bits of work by now that'll probably never see the light of day, and I regard most of them as 'experimental', or learning curves and they're okay never to be seen. [Damned if I can actually chuck them away though!] But I don't think it's any good asking someone else to read you ms and tell you what they think, you have to have enough faith in it by yourself to re-embark on the journey. Does that make sense? It is after all, you who must do the work, so it is you who must feel the passion.
Good luck with it, but don't beat yourself up about it, as life is full of the curious and wonderful for us writers to stare at and think about.
the first question to ask yourself is are you still passionate about the ms, its characters and the storyline?
Second question:- how far along in the... novel, is it? ..... are you?
Third question:- how will you feel towards yourself if you give it up?
Fourth question:- do you think it's any good?
I think without contemplating those questions you don't really have a starting point. But say you were three quarters of the way through a novel that you think is good so far, but it is now boring to you and you can't get motivated to begin again, in that case I'd try to make the effort to spend no more than 2 hours a day working on it to start with, and no more than 4 when you got back into it and that way try to reach the end.
However, if it's a novel that you've lost interest in and have no big feelings for, start a new one, put that old one in the drawer and see if you might bring it to life again one day in the future. I've got quite a few bits of work by now that'll probably never see the light of day, and I regard most of them as 'experimental', or learning curves and they're okay never to be seen. [Damned if I can actually chuck them away though!] But I don't think it's any good asking someone else to read you ms and tell you what they think, you have to have enough faith in it by yourself to re-embark on the journey. Does that make sense? It is after all, you who must do the work, so it is you who must feel the passion.
Good luck with it, but don't beat yourself up about it, as life is full of the curious and wonderful for us writers to stare at and think about.
Rebecca Lloyd
By maintaining that it doesn't really exist and also by walking, cycling, swimming, and getting plenty of sleep. 'Writers' Block' is imaginary... it's just your brain gets tired sometimes, just like other people's brains who aren't writers.
Rebecca Lloyd
the chance to enter different worlds, even though they are the worlds of the imagination.
Rebecca Lloyd
to write every day, and don't eat while you're writing. Exercise every day and do a bit of reading if possible. If you have to go out to work to earn a living, regard your writing as your 'real' work, and your job as that other thing you have to do. So develop discipline, passion for your work and self-belief and don't worry a bit about 'style' because that's something which only develops with time.
Rebecca Lloyd
I'm working on a curious slender novel-type piece of writing and I'm also busy trying to get my third short story collection published. It was a finalist in the Paul Bowles Short Fiction Award with C&R Press this year, so I'm hoping it will get picked up before too long. But it's entirely down to luck, I think.
Rebecca Lloyd
well, something strikes me as poignant, a person, a scene, something that's been told to me, and the story evolves around that when I'm at my best. Otherwise, I have to write from the position of not being inspired at all... got to keep doing it anyway!
Rebecca Lloyd
both my most recent books, and they were published at the same time this year, are short story collections. They are The View from Endless Street with WiDo publishing and Mercy with Tartarus Press. So the two books contain a fairly large body of my writing work from across the years. With short stories the idea often is, and was in my case, to gather them all together and have them published in one book.
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