London Writers' Salon
#212: Marti Leimbach — The Art of Writing a Novel, Why Self-Doubt Is a Good Sign, Revising Without Losing Heart, and Surviving the Highs and Lows of Publishing (From The Vault)
Episode Summary
Bestselling novelist Marti Leimbach on the art of writing a novel, surviving early success and the long career that follows, and turning lived experience into fiction — a remastered version of episode #016.
Episode Notes
Bestselling novelist Marti Leimbach on the art of writing a novel, surviving early success and the long career that follows, and turning lived experience into fiction — a remastered version of episode #016.
You'll learn
- Why your relationship to the page has to outrank every other voice in writing and publishing.
- How to tell apart the voice that says you're no good and the voice that says you're not finished.
- The case for admitting you're not up to the task before you sit down to write.
- What a genuinely good writing day looks like, and why a single sentence can count as one.
- Why no novel is ever perfect, and what Picasso understood about original work.
- How enormous early success actually lands on a writer, and what the morning after looks like.
- A way of finding the real story inside a draft that has grown far too big.
- When self-doubt is a sign of talent rather than a lack of it.
- Why some books have to be written as fiction rather than memoir.
- The trick of convincing yourself you have unlimited time when you clearly don't.
Resources & Links
About Marti Leimbach
Marti Leimbach is known for her bestsellers, Dying Young, made into a film starring Julia Roberts, and Daniel Isn't Talking. She is interested in neurodiversity and has shared the stage with young inventors at the Human Genome Project (Toronto), the National Autistic Society, and the University of Oxford. Her interest in science influenced her YA thriller, Dragonfly Girl.
She teaches on the Masters Programme in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. Dragonfly Girl is her eighth novel, but her first for young adults.