Ask the Author: Martin Chambers
Answered Questions (7)
Martin Chambers
George and Lennie, Of Mice and Men. Of course, you will say this is not a romantic couple and if pressed I will then submit Romeo and Juliette, as the drama required to make a fiction work in not the stuff that will make a fictional couple who are together, interesting.
Martin Chambers
It is in all the things that happen in the world around, observed, seen, in the news or on TV in an article or by the side of the road or in a coffee shop. Talk between two strangers and wondering, what if? Or, who are they? Travel, long hard journeys and slow waits at airports, train stations, on a boat, places where the mind has time to keep asking the who what why? Or, what if it was different? Once there is a story, there is no need to find time or inspiration to write. It simply has to be done.
Martin Chambers
Read my books. All of them. If that doesn't convince you to have a go nothing will. If I can do it, so can you. And, be ruthless on yourself. Not everything you write will be good, and almost nothing you write in first draft will be good. Polish, edit, read my books, come paint my house.
Martin Chambers
Last year my wife had a bout of insomnia. The best advice for that is to not worry about it. Worry is the evil to avoid. So if you are not able to write, go do something else. Like paint the house. Or, come paint our house, it needs it.
Martin Chambers
This year I spent three months touring Europe. Travel is always very generational for ideas. Out of that trip I've got a very challenging and exciting idea, nothing at all to do with any place or thing we saw. Being a little stretched, tired, out of comfort, this all helps ideas to germinate.
Martin Chambers
A novel, a love story set in Australia, between two Indian students who meet at university. It is nearly ready to send to my editor, always a bad time because works are never finished, they simply move to the other side of the deadline. I'm also working on some travel articles and a new edition of the kayak guide to WA, but when I'm head down in the world of a novel there is no room for anything else.
Martin Chambers
I am god! I bring people and places to life, and then I kill them in new and imaginative ways. Sometimes I don't kill them, I send them to do things they don't want to do, but it nearly always involves quite a bit of blood. See my poem, 'The blood on the floor at my desk is not mine'.
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