Ask the Author: Dan Jones
Answered Questions (6)
Dan Jones
It just sort of dawned on me when I was sitting in my agent's office one afternoon. I said literally two words - now the working title of the book. She said, 'great' and went and sold it immediately to a UK and US publisher. That sort of thing doesn't happen very often, so now I have to make it really good...
Dan Jones
From reading. From not wanting a real job. From a couple of teachers who encouraged me - one when I was five years old, one when I was nineteen. From realising I am not much good at anything else.
Dan Jones
Right now? The first chapter of my new book, tomorrow's newspaper column, a book review for the Times, a lecture for a book festival on Saturday and a TV pitch document. Not concurrently, that's just what's on the top layer of stuff on my desk
Dan Jones
Write.
I meet a surprising number of people - young, old and in between - who tell me they want to be a writer, then go on to say that they have never written anything. Well, sure. I want to be a rock god and headline Coachella, but the last time I played guitar seriously I was sixteen. You have to put the hours in - or in the case of writing, the words.
Practising writing is free. Publishing is easier than it ever has been, thanks to the internet. Getting paid for writing is a different matter, and there are different routes to writing professionally depending on what it is you want to do, be it books, screenplays, long-form journalism, newspaper reporting, scurrilous celebrity tittle-tattle, fiction, non-fiction, advertising copy or TV listings. I can't provide an answer here that will be relevant to all, or indeed many, of those fields.
But I can say that you won't get anywhere unless you are already writing: learning your craft, working out your style, contacting other writers, studying other writers' techniques, etc.
If you *are* doing those things, then congratualtions. If you are any good, then success lies close at hand. Just beyond the riverbend, as they say.
I meet a surprising number of people - young, old and in between - who tell me they want to be a writer, then go on to say that they have never written anything. Well, sure. I want to be a rock god and headline Coachella, but the last time I played guitar seriously I was sixteen. You have to put the hours in - or in the case of writing, the words.
Practising writing is free. Publishing is easier than it ever has been, thanks to the internet. Getting paid for writing is a different matter, and there are different routes to writing professionally depending on what it is you want to do, be it books, screenplays, long-form journalism, newspaper reporting, scurrilous celebrity tittle-tattle, fiction, non-fiction, advertising copy or TV listings. I can't provide an answer here that will be relevant to all, or indeed many, of those fields.
But I can say that you won't get anywhere unless you are already writing: learning your craft, working out your style, contacting other writers, studying other writers' techniques, etc.
If you *are* doing those things, then congratualtions. If you are any good, then success lies close at hand. Just beyond the riverbend, as they say.
Dan Jones
Fortunately, I have not suffered it for about 10 years. The key, I think, is to write every day - it's like playing the piano or jogging - the more you do it, the easier it becomes. But it is worth remembering that the best place to start assembling a piece of prose is not necessarily at the beginning - where one is faced with the daunting tyranny of the blinking cursor and blank page. If you are having trouble getting going, then it is a good tactic to just start writing at the bit in the story/article/chapter that excites and interests you the most. Start building there and then, when your work has started to emerge, you can go back and write the trickier bits later, buoyed by confidence, rhythm, etc. The other thing to say is, to (probably mis-)quote William Goldman, STRUCTURE IS EVERYTHING. The best way to avoid not knowing what you want to write is to plan, and plan, and plan and plan before you get started. Not being able to write is often a manifestation of not having your ideas clear in your own mind. To put it another way, it's much easier to build a house if you have an architectural drawing than simply by standing there looking at a massive pile of bricks.
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