I used to hate myself for getting distracted so easily. This is a problem because boredom is where ideas come from, and because writing is sometimes boring. So whenever I get bored, the solution is right there in my pocket.
Now I have a smartphone, and I’m expected to keep it with me at all times in case of emergencies.
My first book was published in 2006, so when I was working on my second, the internet wasn’t yet fast, interactive, or ubiquitous enough to be truly addictive-my main challenge was resisting the urge to turn on the TV. I’m up to 37 books now.Īt what point did you realize that tech was taking a toll on your productivity and time?ĭistraction has been an issue for me as long as I’ve been a writer, but it’s gotten worse in recent years. But it wasn’t until 300 Minutes of Danger came out in 2015 that I was making what you could call a living, and I didn’t quit my day job (as a bookseller) until Hangman was published in 2018. The resulting book, The Lab, sold enough copies in Australasia and North America that I was able to write a second book, and then a third, and so on. (The rest of my class rebelled by never reading anything ever again.) I finished the first draft of my manuscript when I was seventeen, sent it to a publisher, and spent two years working on it with them. I rebelled against it by writing a young-adult sci-fi thriller with lots of car chases and kung-fu. In retrospect, the book was very good, but not much fun. When I was thirteen my whole class studied a novel about bullying, self-harm, body image, and divorce. When I realized there were human beings whose job was to dream up these stories, I knew I wanted to be one of them. series, then Goosebumps, Animorphs, and then eventually stories that had the name of a person on the spine rather than a series title: John Wyndham, Peter Corris, Robert Silverberg.
Somewhere my mum and Dad have a photo of me asleep with my face buried in a Doctor Who novelization–I must have been about seven. I grew up in a house full of books, and I’d been taught to love reading from an early age. How did you know that you wanted to be a writer and what were your first steps in making this your career?
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