Michael Arditti, author of 'The Anointed' - Award-winning author talks about being a morning person, unpacking religion, and being told what he can't write.
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 5 August 2021
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Michael Arditti is an award-winning author of 11 novels, he's written short stories, and worked as a theatre critic and book reviewer for national newspapers.
His new novel is 'The Anointed'. It's a retelling of the biblical King David, as told through his 3 wives, Michal, Abigail and Bathsheba. We talk about how he put his own spin on history, and why he chose to write about such a specific time, and retell a famous story.
His novel, 'Easter', won the first Waterstones Mardi Gras Award, he's also penned 'The Celibate', 'Of Men and Angels', 'The Enemy', and others. All of his books explore the theme of religion, and why some believe and others don't. We talk about why he constantly unpacks that in his stories, and how he comes up with new ideas for ways to explore the theme in prose.
Michael talks about why he's a morning person, and how he fits his day around that, what he thinks about originality and wasting-words, and why he doesn't like being told what he can't write simply because he's a male in London.
You can get a copy of 'The Anointed' here - https://amzn.to/3AdwLzb
You can support the show on Patreon here - patreon.com/writersroutine.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome along to writers' routine. |
| 0:11.1 | This week we're chatting to the award-winning Michael Arditi. |
| 0:14.3 | He's an author of literary fiction, and they all explore faith sometimes through history as well. |
| 0:21.7 | He's been a theatre critic and a book reviewer for national newspapers |
| 0:24.9 | and his new one is The Anointed. |
| 0:27.5 | We talk about themes and inserting fiction into old stories that have been told many, many times. |
| 0:33.8 | And also what he thinks about overwriting and wasting words. |
| 0:37.9 | I know that I've got several novels that are sort of ideas are half formed in my mind, |
| 0:43.5 | which I would like to get done, but I don't feel anymore that my life would be wasted if they weren't done. |
| 0:51.5 | So, yeah, whatever it takes is part of the process. And I think people should feel that. |
| 0:58.8 | I don't think people should worry if they throw stuff away. I mean, I know there are some writers |
| 1:04.6 | who write a first draft of a book and then throw it away completely, a complete first draft of a book and don't, but have a form then in their mind and then |
| 1:15.4 | start again, which some people would think would be perhaps a very wasteful way of doing it. |
| 1:21.5 | But everybody has his or her own way. |
| 1:25.6 | And I think that there are no rules. It's a big beefy one this week with |
| 1:30.1 | Michael Arditi in writer's routine. Yes, hello. Welcome to the show. It's writers' routine. |
| 1:42.5 | My name's Dan Simpson. This is where we take a look |
| 1:44.6 | inside an author's day to very simply see how they get stuff done. As I mentioned, it's a big |
| 1:51.6 | beefy into it chat this week, so I think we'll crack straight on. Michael Arditi is the prize-winning |
| 1:57.6 | author of 11 books. He's written some short stories too. He's been a theatre critic. He's written book reviews. His novel, Easter, won the first Waterstones Mardi Gras Award. He's also written the celibate of Men and Angels, The Enemy, and many others, and they all really have the theme of religion running through them. We talk about why that is, |
| 2:19.2 | why belief and, well, non-belief, is something that he likes to unpack. Now, his new story is the |
| 2:26.2 | Anointed. It's a retelling of the biblical King David in ancient Israel. It's all written in |
... |
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