Lynn Coady
Lynn Coady
Lynn Coady is a Canadian novelist and journalist...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 January 1970
CountryCanada
genuinely hard love people
There are people out there who genuinely love literature, who genuinely love to read and read widely, who will never like, or even necessarily get, my books. That was a hard one to swallow, to not feel slighted by.
except perhaps pleasing
When writing sex scenes, there is often no pleasing anyone, except perhaps the writer herself.
atheism moral opinions position rather richard rigid
Atheism is a moral position - a rather rigid one, if you've ever read the opinions of its highest-profile espousers, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.
broccoli children consuming entertainment few force psychic sad turned
It's kind of sad, the way we've turned the entertainment of reading into a kind of psychic broccoli - something to feel guilty about if you don't force it on your face-making children while dutifully consuming a few token florets yourself.
appreciation ideal lacking love man understanding
You can't hint a man into bestowing the ideal gift that displays all the love, appreciation and understanding you feel is lacking the rest of year.
allowed basic disregard great human left manners natural room tendency
Formalized rules of manners were so great because they left no room for basic human haplessness. They allowed us to circumvent our natural boorish tendency to disregard the feelings of others.
last looked spent stop typical university
It's the typical mid-life crisis kind of thing, where you just stop and wonder, 'Should I go back to university and get a law degree?' I kind of looked around me and thought, 'What kind of idiot am I that I've just spent the last 10 years writing novels? Financially, I'm pretty much where I was when I was 28.'
behind lecture lends minimal music needs nicely writer
Do not make the writer stand behind a podium. Anything but. A podium reeks of the lecture hall. A music stand, on the other hand, is nicely minimal and lends the writer - who usually needs all the help s/he can get - a musician's second-hand cool-factor.
deal great heavy lifting narrative overlook plot prose readers
Considerations of plot do a great deal of heavy lifting when it comes to long-form narrative - readers will overlook the most ham-fisted prose if only a writer can make them long to know what happens next.
bit considered convince digestion diversion fresh frivolous fruits further mental ourselves processes
The novel, as a genre, was once considered a diversion every bit as frivolous as Facebook, but over the years, we've managed to convince ourselves that reading fiction is as important to our mental digestion as fresh fruits and vegetables are to the processes that take place a little further down.
We are all somebody's children, and when we're in pain, we regress, instinctively looking to our parents to make everything better.
bring good impulse kid ourselves
I really do think of it in moral terms. I think that we can't kid ourselves that the storytelling impulse is innocent and does nothing but bring good to the world.
absolutely against bear books grudge guess interest might quite whom
I guess you could say I'm 'kind' to my past books in the way you might be kind to an old boyfriend you still quite like and bear no grudge against but with whom have absolutely no interest in getting back together.
add consider family immediate member offend whether written
When revising, consider whether you have written anything that will hurt or offend a member of your immediate family. If the answer is no, go back and add something.