Malorie Blackman advises budding authors to pick up on news stories, but Julia Donaldson warns of pitfalls â and Alan Moore says you should
âItâs not about finding your voice,â he says. âItâs about guarding it and keeping it real and authentic. Itâs about keeping it yours.â
âRead lots of poems,â she says. âI believe it probably isnât possible to write a good poem unless youâve read some good poetry.â
Moore, whose work includes the graphic novels Watchmen and V for Vendetta, says: âIt is probably fair to say that a person will be precisely as good a writer as they are a reader.âÂ
the old adage that you should write what you know is âdreadful adviceâ. He says there are âvery few people in the world who know enough to make a story genuinely excitingâ.
Instead, he says, âwhat you must do is write what you feel. Analyse your feelings. Then take those feelings and blow them up huge.â
âRead terrible books, because they can be more inspiring than good books,â says Moore. âIf youâre inspired by a good book, there is always the danger of plagiarism, of writing something too close to it. Whereas a genuinely helpful reaction to a piece of work that youâre reading is: âJesus Christ, I could write this shit.â
