Good writers offer advice. Great writers offer condolences'If you want to be a writer,then you'd better be ready to hurl yourself at the door. That's the message from Stephen Marche in this irresistibly droll broadside. Perseverance,in the teeth of rejection,forms the essence of a writer's life. It's what it takes,so no whining. Even the greatest of writers grapple with failure. Marche's provocative,often very funny vignettes range through literary history from Samuel Johnson ('broke as fck') to Jane Austen's lacklustre publishing deals,to Dostoevsky facing mock-execution. The trick is to endure. As James Baldwin famously exhorts us:'Write. Find a way to keep alive and write.'For new and seasoned writers,Marche's words are salutary and,in a paradoxical way,consoling.All writers are up against it. Success is just an attire.
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Publisher: Sort of BooksISBN: 9781914502088Number of pages: 112Weight: 10 gDimensions: 176 x 108 x 12 mmEdition: Main
MEDIA REVIEWS
I was considerably amused by Stephan Marche's short but pungent book...it contains zingersA sparkling cocktail of bittersweet jokes and fizzing truth bombsMore heartening than a thousand cheery Instagram postsOccasionally when the stars are aligned,someone writes a work as provocative,informed and droll as On Writing and FailurePraise for Stephen Marche's The Shining at the Bottom of the Sea:'The most exciting mash-up of literary genres since David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas
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