What they don’t tell you in creative writing school
An interview with British author A.L. Kennedy on the Huffington Post website lays to rest any illusions aspiring literary fiction writers may have about the life awaiting them should they ever get their work published. Kennedy is blunt and funny in her assessment of the writing life. On the state of publishing: “Fewer publishing houses concentrated in conglomerate hands trying to produce more books of less quality. No full time readers, no full time copy editors and therefore missed newcomers and piss-poor final presentation of texts on the shelves, silly covers, greedy and simple-minded bookshop chains, lunatic bidding wars designed to crush the spirit of unknown newcomers….”
And then there’s the glamorous life of the jet-setting novelist: “Endless community halls and libraries, immensely tiring tours of places that might be interesting if you ever got to see them, food you can’t eat, or never get, not enough sleep, crushing isolation, little or no chance of a cup of tea on the road, endless working to subsidise the writing.”
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Read the A.L. Kennedy interview
