AK Blakemore in The Guardian:
When I teach creative writing, I often find myself insisting upon the essential importance of fun: that while the process of writing can and should be challenging, there’s no benefit to be had in martyrdom, and actually a level of relish is neither an indulgence or a distraction, but pretty compelling evidence of an author having found her proper form and subject. It’s what keeps you coming back. If you aren’t bent gigglingly over your manuscript, like a stock photo model alone with her salad, then what’s the point of any of it? There’s a stable of classics I draw on to evidence this claim, great novels where a big part of the appeal is feeling as though you’ve stumbled into a very interesting person’s exact idea of a very good time: Woolf’s Orlando, Nabokov’s Pnin, Poor Things by Alasdair Gray, The Pisces by Melissa Broder. A lot of Austen, but maybe most of all Emma. And from now on, I’ll be adding Francis Spufford’s Nonesuch to the list.
More here.
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