How I write a book

How I write a book

Strangely, how I write a book depends – for me at any rate – on the genre, as much as anything else.

In women’s lit, which I am writing at the moment, I notice that Phase One begins with an irrepressible impulse to write something about someone, perhaps a single, short chapter, a couple of pages to set the tone, to introduce the main characters – a wife and her small son, for instance. Or I might take up a character who first appeared in a short story. People are what motiv...