Design Feast Series: Quotes

“Writers are always edging towards the nightmarish to live with, don’t you think? We’re off in a corner doing our weird stuff. I can’t remember where it comes from but the best definition of writing a novel I’ve ever heard is jumping off a cliff and having to invent the rope on the way down.

But it’s godawful hard work getting a good book together and even if you do it, it doesn’t guarantee anything. And it’s getting really hard now, all the time, for new writers to break out. If you’ve got any vague hint of originality about you at all, then you’re going to struggle at first. I was lucky that a small Dublin press, Stinging Fly, wanted to publish my first book, and that from there the reviews were good and I was able to keep going. I think the only workable definition of success for a writer is if you can keep going.

I think you’ve ideally got to limit your focus to your desk, and the peripheries of your desk, and not think too much about anything else beyond that—the wider context, what people will think. If you do that and get a bit of luck, everything will work out. Of course it’s hard to shut out the ambition. Every writer and artist has ambition in them. You want to be widely read. Many say they don’t but they’re lying. If you genuinely don’t have any ambition as a writer, then write the pages and go throw them off the side of a fucking cliff.”

Kevin Barry, Author