Pascal Engman, author of 'Femicide' - Bestselling Swedish writer discusses planning pressure, the international audience, and the perfect first draft
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 13 October 2022
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pascal Engman is the bestselling Swedish novelist of his generation, called 'the next Steig Larsson'. He has sold plenty of books around the world, and they're now being published in the UK. His new one is 'Femicide, it looks at 'incel' culture. Involuntary celebates who hate women, and what happens when they switch off their laptops and do something about it in real life.
We chat about completely different parts of the world he writes in, and how much pressure he puts on 9 months of his year to try and write a book in the last 3. Also, you can hear why he tries to make his first draft as perfect as possible, because he hates editing so much. We chat about why he wants to entertain and teach in his novels, and how much he thinks about the international audience when he's writing... particularly the jokes.
You can hear about the original blueprint for the novel and how much it changes, how he deals with time away from writing, and what his favourite font is.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine. |
| 0:12.6 | This week we're chatting to Pascal Engerman. |
| 0:15.7 | He is the best-selling Swedish novelist of his generation. |
| 0:19.1 | He's been called the Next Stieg Larsson, and his books |
| 0:22.6 | are now being released in the UK after being published all around the world. We talk about the |
| 0:28.0 | pressure that his writing year puts on him. Also, how often things change from the original |
| 0:33.9 | blueprint that he sets out, and how he deals with time away from the writing, |
| 0:39.4 | how good is he at switching off in being with the family? |
| 0:42.1 | When I wrote my three first books, I was totally absorbed by them. |
| 0:45.4 | I couldn't think about anything else while I was writing them or before I was writing them. |
| 0:52.2 | And yeah, as you said, said the whole days when I was |
| 0:55.3 | writing them but and I asked an older colleague of mine and Yong Yu a very |
| 1:01.1 | famous witch writer about this and he said that you're gonna learn how to |
| 1:06.1 | distract yourself from I don't know from because, yeah, when I was watching a |
| 1:11.9 | film, I couldn't, I couldn't enjoy the film. I was just thinking about the storyline or the |
| 1:16.6 | plot or the characters or how did they do this and the same one else reading a book. |
| 1:23.1 | But now it comes pretty natural for me just working those four or five hours writing, |
| 1:30.4 | and then I don't think about the novel at all until next morning. |
| 1:35.7 | There is more with Pascal Engman in this week's writers routine. |
| 1:50.8 | Yes, welcome along, It's writer's routine where we take a look through an author's working day. |
| 1:59.6 | Very simply, to see how they plan their day, their life, their space to get down that idea and hopefully get it published. |
| 2:02.2 | My name's Dan Simpson. Thank you so much for being there. Thank you for listening, for following, for sharing, downloading. However you found us, |
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