My Writing Life: Bill Broady
"Writer’s block is really hard for authors... You have to be persistent and just keep going."
1. What book should every writer read?
I will, if I may, suggest two books that are complementary. The first one is W. Somerset Maugham’s A Writer’s Notebook. That is a terrific book about the basics of the craft; very simple, very professional, nothing highfalutin. The other book I would suggest would be Fyodor Dostoevsky’s A Writer’s Diary, which is a huge book, and is really all about magic and the deep stuff that makes writing. Put the two of them together and you can pretty much extrapolate anything you’d need to write.
2. What is the one thing you wish someone had told you before you started your writing career?
I’d say that rather than entirely getting bound up with other writers, I learnt more about writing in many ways from talking to visual artists and musicians – people who, I think, are spiritually and creatively trying to do the same kind of thing as I am, but in another medium.
3. What is the one thing you wish someone had told you before you started your writing career?
I can’t honestly think of a great deal of advice that I ever took. I used to teach creative writing at the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. I taught the novel there for a couple of years. I would never really advise anybody. I would always say to them, “Well, only you know the answer to the question you’re asking me,” and then we would talk about it. They would end up telling me what it was they wanted to know. So, if you like, I gave them advice by not giving them advice.
4. What is the most underestimated challenge about being a professional writer?
Writer’s block is really hard for authors. There are terrible times when, even now, I go to my office and I find that nothing comes. My way through that has always been to sit there and just write rubbish, over and over and over again. I put the hours in. And at the end of it, at least I can come away and say, look, I’ve written a comma! It wasn’t the right day, but I put the hours in. I tried. I think you have to be persistent and just keep going.
5. What was the proudest moment of your writing career?
It was when my first novel came out. It was called Swimmer and it was about the world of competitive swimming. There was a review in The Observer by Christina Patterson. It was astonishingly good, which was nice, and at the end of it she wrote, “He penetrates the deepest dreams of the human heart.” I burst into tears on Lordship Lane. That was my proudest moment, very early on in my career. Good things have happened since but nothing else has had that degree of impact.
6. What is your typical writing day like?
A writing day for me is pretty much working with all the stops out: two hours in the morning, off to the office, six or seven hours there, and another two more hours in the evening. Even if I have writers block, I’ll still hammer away. At the moment, I’m deep into a project so this is what it’s like for me. When I finish the book I’m writing at the moment, I will have a long break.
Bill Broady was born in Leeds and educated in Bradford, York and London. A former croupier, cartographer and care worker, he has written three novels: Swimmer (HarperCollins, 2000), Eternity is Temporary (Portobello, 2006) and The Night-Soil Men (Salt, 2024). He has also published a collection of short stories, In This Block There Lives a Slag… (HarperCollins, 2001).
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