Q: What did you personally take away from this?Ī: 'An important lesson for me as a male writer was hearing women writers about the gender difference. He told me that when he was getting started he was working six days a week as a dentist and writing two hours in the morning which shows his commitment.' Alaa al Aswani, the Egyptian writer, began as a dentist. Rabih Alameddine, a Lebanese-American writer, started as a painter and transitioned from a visual language into a literary language. Q: Did all the novelists know they wanted to write from the outset?Ī: 'No, there were different responses.

It does make me think that in some way writers are just very active readers.' Real novelists are reading voraciously and constantly and without pause. I teach from time to time and I impress this on my students, the importance of reading before you write.

Q: Did you find anything in common with them all?Ī: 'One thing I found most exciting is how much everyone reads. That was what I liked hearing, that these different authors gave me entirely contradictory answers.'

Everyone had a different approach and a different idea about what a novel is. Q: What did you find most surprising in their replies?Ī: 'The surprising thing was also the most comforting, and that is that there is no one way to write a novel. Writing a novel is a struggle and it is nice to get advice.' I am in the middle of writing my second novel (his first 'Lost City Radio' came out in 2007) and you get these incredible responses from this diverse and talented group of writers. I wanted to make sure the list was very international. The answers varied from Stephen King's distinction between novels and short stories - 'Novels are longer and have more shit in them' - to Toibin's take on his characters - 'They are just words.'Īlarcon spoke to Reuters about the book and his writing:Ī: 'I was asked to edit the book and I jumped at the chance to talk to all these amazing novelists. The result was 'The Secret Miracle: The Novelist's Handbook,' released this month, with insights from authors such as Roddy Doyle, Mario Vargas Llosa, Rick Moody, Haruki Murakami, and George Pelecanos, Gary Shteyngart, and Colm Toibin. CANBERRA - Ever wanted to know the secret to writing a good novel? Peruvian-American novelist Daniel Alarcon set out to find the answer but ended up finding that the secret is that there really is no secret.Īlarcon, who has one novel and two books of stories to his name, interviewed 54 novelists, asking questions such as what do you look for in a novel, how much do you know about the plot before you start, and what makes characters compelling.

The Secret Miracle by Daniel Alarcón