ML: You can try too hard and you have to find your own authentic voice, really. KR: What an interesting insight, that people who want to become a published writer can try too hard. And that’s when I wrote Tractors and people really enjoyed it… So I may as well just give up and have a bit of fun. In the end, by the time I’d reached my 50s I thought nobody is going to publish anything I’ve written. And actually what really made the breakthrough for me was learning to be funny. And I had my models, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Dickens… And I somehow thought that’s how you had to be to be a writer – with long perfectly formed sentences and lots of adjectives, deep and meaningful. ML: I think one of the things is that I did an English degree at university. Kathryn Ryan: What was particular about A Short History that factored into that timing? They just need to find the right moment and the right reader and off they go. I think lots of people have got good books in them. Marina Lewycka: To succeed you have to be persistent and you have to be lucky. Read an edited snapshot of the conversation:
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