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The reader is a newcomer, to each book. We enter every novel on its first page to find, within it, a world that already exists; a world that has, seemingly, been going on without us — and so we, too, feel to be outsiders, momentarily.
'Why is rejection inevitable?’ I eventually came up with my game-changing theory. It’s called the Rejection is Actually an Essential Part of the Process theory. I’m aware that the name needs some work.'
'Then my parents got sick, and suddenly life wasn't solely about the highs and lows of school friendships and pet ownership, and adventures on holiday in Cornwall. It was dark and scary and challenging and very difficult to understand. So I wrote about it.'
Ruth Dugdall visits some famous writing spaces – from J. K. Rowling’s Edinburgh café to Dylan Thomas’s shed – and asks what a writer’s chosen workplace can reveal about their life and art.
25-08-2022

Bethan Roberts yearns for Anglesey, a place of family history, childhood holidays and a beautiful, mysterious family language.

Morgen Witzel explores the moods of Dartmoor, and surveys the many writers, including himself, who have been inspired by its solitude.

Rebecca Goss looks up at the skies she's lived beneath, and considers how they've shaped her writing from above.

'Occasionally acceptance comes first time, but more usually when a published piece appears, it will have a string of rejections trailing visibly behind it like a comet's tail. Students need to learn that this is simply part of the process of getting published.'
'It could be argued that this human drive for narrative has constituents similar to appetite and, say, sleep. I can't prove this scientifically, but imagining a world without literature is like imagining Cumbria without fells or lakes. '
17-02-2022

In the second installment of 'My Genre’s Status', RLF writers consider the challenges and opportunities that come with working in a booming or highly regarded genre, with the effects of technology, the impact of high-profile prizewinners and bestsellers, and the perils of marketing all playing a role.

'I've now had twelve books published and am writing my thirteenth. Being an author is a little like stepping into a boxing ring; a few brief moments of adoration and celebration before the next round of punches.'
'I frequently think that if I'd had any sense I'd have given up all other forms of writing and concentrated on writing for children. Actually, publishers don't really like genre fluid writers like me, though no one says so.'
'The idea that writers are wealthy people is endemic. Children's and Young Adult writers are often asked to appear in schools for free, or send books to faraway places. Everybody knows of a handful of writers who are unimaginably wealthy.'
'Thinking of Shaw, newly arrived in London from Dublin, heading hopefully for the British Museum to find everyone was writing novels, I remember the details of my own particular version of that profound and unforgettable sense of failure.'
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