Hello, welcome to a brand new episode of writer's routine.

This week, we're chatting to Sebastian Folks, one of the biggest names in literary fiction across the world.

Birdsong launched him to success and he's back with

a memoir, fires which burned brightly. And you can hear whether being a novelist has lived up to the

dreams that he had growing up. Also, why writing a novel is a lot like getting a puzzle done.

It's very much like doing a crossword actually.

Sometimes with a cryptic crossword, you look at the clue and there are, you know,

there are three parts of the clue and one answer, and you really work at it inductively, logically, and so on and so forth.

And eventually you crack it, so you're like a code breaker but then you get stuck

halfway through and you go away and think about something else and you come back and the six

clues in the cross world which completely flummoxed you in the morning you look at them and say well it's

obviously it's constabulary isn't it or it's heads down or you know it's it's just obvious from the shape of the word, and you know, just click, click, click. It's just because your brain has sort of reset itself at a slightly different angle. And we run through how he's changed the way he plans his books through the years. Every book is different. Every book you start. It's as if you've never written one before really. You think, God, how do I do

this? And I mean, I used to write novels a bit like a sort of school essay. I would have a sort of

piece of paper beside it with sort of 10 points I was going to cover. And I would sort of work

methodically and directly through them until I'd finished. And of course, I was then using a typewriter.

So there would be a pile of paper growing by the side of the typewriter itself.

And then other times I think of it more like, I think of it more like painting now, really.

I'll start with a blank canvas and I will start in one area and do something very detailed. and it's only after about a couple of weeks

I realised that I'm spending all my time on a minor detail which is really of no importance in

the finished canvas at all. It's all on the way with Sebastian folks in a brand new

writers routine.

This week's episode of writers' routine is sponsored by Ingram Spark, who let you publish like a pro.

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