Monday, August 18, 2008

'Write what you know'

Arvind Adiga in FT:

A piece of advice that every aspiring novelist is sure to get, sooner or later, is to "write what you know". By restricting yourself to direct experience and autobiography, the theory goes, you give your narrative authenticity. Now comes a first book by a young Vietnamese-Australian author that challenges this maxim: The Boat , a collection of short stories by Nam Le, insists that literature must also be created out of worlds the writer does not know.

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3 comments:

Betty Jo said...

Congratulations, Zafar! I’ve selected your excellent blog, Dream Ink, as a 2008 Brilliante Weblog Premio winner.

Rules for the recipients of this award are as follows:

1. The award may be displayed on a winner's blog.
2. Add a link to the person you received the award from.
3. Nominate up to seven other blogs.
4. Add their links to your blog.
5. Add a message to each person that you have passed the award on in the comments section of their blog.

Keep up your good work!

Betty Jo Tucker
http://www.BettyJoTucker.com
Please leave comments at my Memosaic blog:
http://memosaic.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

Nice blog you have here. I think budding authors need a lot of support and less advices!

Unknown said...

Thanks Onyeka for posting your comment. That's so true dude. Writing a novel seems to be such a narcissistic and thankless job these days anyways):