Going the DISTANCE
Author James McCreet talks to writer Liz Champion about problems with her work-in-progress
James McCreet
Liz Champion
Pretty much every writer has got lost in the labyrinth of their own novel. There comes a point where you either believe it’s a work of genius with its own internal logic (though nobody else understands it) or you simply have no idea whether it makes sense or not. This is especially the case when a novel goes through multiple drafts or is written over a long period.
Finding an Ariadne’s thread or a train of breadcrumbs out of the labyrinth sometimes means demolishing all of the walls just to see some daylight. It can be a painful process to undo work you’ve put your heart into. On the other hand, one of the essential skills for every novelist is how to navigate a novel.
Here, we talk to an accomplished writer about problems with her first book and how she has been finding her way out of the labyrinth.
What’s your book about, Liz?
It’s a memoir about running (using novelistic techniques) and how it helped me cope with the illness and death of my grandfather, interwoven with memories of a childhood being overweight and hapless at sport. I started writing it as part of a life writing module for my MA in Creative Writing at Sheffield Hallam University.