Does it help aspiring writers to join literary groups?
Depends how brave you are. It would terrify me. For all the talk of support, writers can be terribly undermining of one another’s confidence. Writing fiction is essentially a solitary thing. “I’m gay, so I suppose that means my work is written from a gay perspective or understanding. That said, I’d be bored to tears if this meant I was only ‘allowed’ to write gay stories.” You write lots of reviews. Do you need to read widely in order to write well oneself? I’ve always felt that reading is the best way to learn how to write. Find the sort of author you want to be. Copy them shamelessly. Take their work to pieces to find out how it gets its effects. Dare to improve on it. Very few writers find their own voice immediately. Could you manage without a PC? I love my laptop but I’d be very wary of letting computers get between me and an emerging novel. Their curse is that they make everything you type into them look so tidy and finished. Do you think any of the new novel-shaper softwares now
