Francesca Brill on Being a Writer

In our penultimate post, we take an excerpt from Francesca Brill's article 'Being a Writer'.  Here, the screenwriter and novelist discusses the importance of writers finding their personal writing space:

‘Personally, I need to be in a sensory deprivation zone before I can get any work done so, sadly, neither the steamy social cafe of J.K. Rowling fame, nor Fay Weldon's carved-out space on the kitchen table, nor even the erotic hush of the library are any good for me.  I'm more in the Jonathan Franzen/Zadie Smith mould.  Even the internet is a distraction too far, though I haven't gone as far as welding closed my internet access on the computer or buying the software that keeps it at bay for a certain number of hours a day.  Instead, I work in a shed with a window that offers no entertainment beyond the occasional city bird foraging hopelessly among the unattractive bushes that separate me from the house.  The truism identified so acutely by Virginia Woolf stands firm: I do need a room of my own - but I understand that even if that room is metaphorical and is bounded only by the edges of a cafe table or the light shed by a lamp during stolen hours in the night, that space is the shared requirement for all writers.'

To read the article in its entirety, which includes insight into Francesca's writing processes, how she dealt with rejection and how she deals with the business side of writing, order the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2014 now. 

(All online purchases made before 3 July 2013 will receive a 25% discount).

Found this piece interesting? Other sneak-peek articles include:

Being A Literary Agent In The Digital Age

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