Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Don't Get Depressed: A Writer's Guide to Surviving the Recession


The always wonderful Guardian guides writers through the tumult of our economic crisis with seven principles.

A couple of them...

2.Know Thy Genre
In a crisis, there's a temptation to reinvent the wheel. Don't panic. Know what it is you are writing – essay, poem, novel, history, memoir, thriller etc – and do that as well as you can. There are some wonderful novels in verse (Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate comes to mind) and some fabulously fictional histories (Carlyle's French Revolution), but these are the exceptions.

3.Tell a story
However you achieve this, don't forget that the book- and newspaper-reading public likes a narrative. You'll never go broke if you hold them by the throat and keep them asking "What happened next?"

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