Nick Earls
Nick Earls
Nicholas Francis Ward "Nick" Earls is an award-winning novelist from Brisbane, Australia. He writes humorous popular fiction about everyday life, and is often compared to Nick Hornby. The majority of Earls' novels are set in his home town of Brisbane, a fact which led to his high local profile, and his fronting of a major Brisbane tourism campaign...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth8 October 1963
CountryAustralia
almost good money name paid realised seemed true whose
When I was about eight, I realised the person whose name was on the book got money for it, and it seemed almost too good to be true that you could get paid for making things up.
real book character
One of the things that makes characters real is details. Life offers a lot of details. You just have to choose and use them wisely. When you give them to fictional people and a fictional story, their purpose and their meaning changes, so it's best to see the version in the book as fiction entirely, wherever it started out.
real people attention
I want my fiction to feel real most of the time, so it makes sense to pay attention to life and to how people work.
real writing magazines
I actually find it pretty tedious when magazines ask me to write articles based on my real life, because I've already lived it and there's nothing new to discover. So, I'm unlikely to write a memoir.
fits saying understand
You can have your own language. You can have your own dialect; you can have your own way of saying things, but if you don't actually understand the way the language fits together, it's chaos.
central create feels few might quite unlikely virtues
When I create a character, particularly my central character, I want someone who is interesting and feels real and who might have quite a few virtues but is unlikely to be perfect, who hasn't necessarily made all the right choices.
adult great life lived maternal
My maternal grandmother was the longest-lived of my grandparents. She migrated to Australia in her 80s and lived into her 90s. It was great that she got to be part of my adult life.
publishing
I wrote my first novel-length story when I was 14 but had no idea what to do with it. Brisbane was a long way from the publishing industry then. Nowhere's a long way from the publishing industry now.
brings country festival festivals good great locally puts spot writers
I think one of the things the writers' festival does that is very good is that it brings writers from around the world and around the country and locally and puts them all in the one spot together, and that's what a lot of the world's great writers' festivals do.
characters compelled feeling freedom hold ideas recognise small sounds stories value
I like to jot down ideas on the back of envelopes and to recognise the potential value in small things. I also like the freedom to think without feeling compelled to write too early. Stories are often better if we can hold back and get to know the characters and the sounds of language.
aunt family full great grew hospital naval royal served ship side strong war women
I grew up in a family full of strong women. A great aunt on my mother's side had been a matron on a hospital ship in World War II, and one on my father's side had served in the Women's Royal Naval Service.
books life loved stories
I got into writing because books and stories were always a big part of my life. I loved listening to them and then reading them, and I loved making them up.
characters fictitious managing peculiar relationship relationships spend thinking time work
Having to think so much about fictitious relationships that work or don't work, and with each relationship between characters managing to do one or other of those in its own peculiar way, I spend a lot of time thinking about relationships, real and imagined.
chance freed life opportunity paper present readers stories written
E-books present the greatest opportunity readers have ever had to find each other. It's a chance for stories written for paper to find new life and a chance for new stories to appear, freed from the constraints of paper publishing.