Starting Out in Crime
I have to report that Crime Fiction Reader has managed to tempt me into the world of crime...and I am very grateful.
At last, after a miserable haitus of about three months, I have started to write again - over 2 500 words today on a crime-based short story for this Honno competition. This is not something I've ever tried before and I'm enjoying it. Not very literary perhaps, but maybe that's a good thing - 'write something people want to read' one of my editors told me recently - and at least I'm writing something, which makes me happy. Thanks CFR!
At last, after a miserable haitus of about three months, I have started to write again - over 2 500 words today on a crime-based short story for this Honno competition. This is not something I've ever tried before and I'm enjoying it. Not very literary perhaps, but maybe that's a good thing - 'write something people want to read' one of my editors told me recently - and at least I'm writing something, which makes me happy. Thanks CFR!
posted by Clare Dudman at 9:20 pm
13 Comments:
You're more than welcome! Good luck.
As they say, crime pays! :-)
thats excellent! good luck!
Well, I want to read what you write anyway (!) but this sounds fun. Do you get to kill people?
You'll make it your very own, Clare. Genre doesn't have to mean generic. (Actually I've seen plenty of "literary" generic!) Happy wordsmithing.
I think it (the crime) provides a good plot framework for doing whatever you, as a writer, want. Look at "Tenderness of Wolves", for example -- "crime" or "not crime" fiction? Impossible to say.
I look forward to reading it, when you have finished.
And, I echo, good on Crime Fic Reader!
Good for you! And genre is a misnomer anyway.
Just one thing to add, Clare - do what you enjoy!
Nothing written achieves an audience unless enjoyed in the making.
You find the pearl; the reader finds the pearl.
Looking forward to what you deliver and loving the thought of your take on crime!
Best,
CFR
I am so pleased for you Clare. I like to read crime myself .... but have never attempted to write it - would be fun to try sometime.
'Nothing written achieves an audience unless enjoyed in the making.'
CFC, how I wish it were that simple! Philip Roth, for example, who has certainly had his readership from Portnoy's Complaint onwards (if not earlier), has often said how little he enjoys the writing process.
Thanks for all the comments, and yes, Sarah, I get to kill...I've not quite got to the corpse yet but really looking forward to it:-)
Literary generic...I like it. Yes, that's what I'll be...
Does Roth really not enjoy writing? I'm not doubting you Lee, but I do find that strange. Writing is such a difficult business, I think you have to enjoy it in some way to keep on going.
Good news!
Your amazin' brain will produce something cracking!( And that's not JUST the pistol...)
Clare, I don't know if you can fully trust Roth's - or anyone's? - statements about himself, but when asked in retrospective interviews how much of his writing time over the course of his professional life he's enjoyed, he answers, apparently in all earnestness, a few weeks at most. I think there are authors for whom writing is an obsession, possibly a habit, even possibly the least of all professional evils, but not 'enjoyable' in the conventional sense. And in any case, writing is such a complex - and individual - endeavour that I'm wary of making easy assumptions about the process.
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