Ask the Author: Jasper Barry
Answered Questions (6)
Jasper Barry
I was once given an exercise that was supposed to cure writer's block. I was supposed to do it before I sat down to write. But I got entirely blocked about the exercise - it was easier just to get writing instead.
Mainly, however, it's not writer's block that stops me writing. It's life events, and there's no real cure for that.
Mainly, however, it's not writer's block that stops me writing. It's life events, and there's no real cure for that.
Jasper Barry
As I'm writing a trilogy, the ideas involved in creating all three books came together. Where did they come from? I like reading 19th century novels and was running out of the real thing, so I thought I'd write some myself. I like the complexity and breadth of the the nineteenth century novel, the opportunity to locate characters in fixed social structures and examine the stresses they experience. In my books, these stresses are all too real as both protagonists are gay. I suppose an examination of past (and indeed present-day) prejudice and injustice is one of the main themes of the trilogy.
Jasper Barry
I've always written - under the bedclothes, by torchlight, at my boarding school, I wrote a 500 page novel about the Irish Troubles (it was absolutely atrocious). Writing is ghastly, a work of endurance, like climbing a mountain, particularly when you get to the last third of a book, and almost anything - descaling the kettle, detangling the cat - seems more attractive than putting words on paper. But I'm at a loss when I'm not writing. So it's not really a question of inspiration, but of necessity.
Jasper Barry
Volume Three of the Miremont trilogy - as yet untitled.
Jasper Barry
Read what you want to write - if you want to write novels, read novels, read and read and read. That way you absorb techniques of plotting, structure and characterisation by osmosis.
Jasper Barry
Being able to retreat into an alternative world. (Plus not going to an office, of course, and being able to work in your dressing-gown.)
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