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He was talking at the Brixton Library event with China Mieville. I liked him (the man) a great deal - he was very funny and incredibly self-effacing, and seemed keen to debunk the perception that Writers are a Special Breed. (I know you are of a Special Breed, though, Sax.)
He read an extract which I remember being full of surprising imagery, depth and colour. It made me pick up the book and browse through at the end whilst I was trying to pluck up the courage to address China (which I since have in a dream, but that's a story for another thread...). I remember thinking that my random selections of prose didn't seem quite as well-written as the one he picked, and then realising that wasn't altogether surprising.
One of the interesting things to come out of the talk was that whilst China is a meticulous planner, Jon is very much an image-driven writer - he'll almost always start a book with nothing more than an image. He likes to travel and research his books in an experiential way - i.e. the settings will all be based on somewhere he has been (he's travelled extensively in North Africa, and plans to set books somewhere he wants to visit). Essentially he's a very visual writer, and I thought that came across in the variety of extracts I read. Oh, and he also said he never really knows until the second draft how a book is going to finish. And that the sci-fi nature is driven by the story - it evolves from 'what if?' considerations. I think he meant he didn't deliberately set out to write genre fiction, that's just how it happened. |
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