I approached writing a story for the CBC Literary Awards as a mercenary venture - $5,000 for one story, not bad. Now, how do you win it? Jurors are wading through skyscrapers of paper, looking for one story that stands out.
I had a novel in the back of my mind when I won an Ian St James story competition in 1993. At the award ceremony an agent asked me if I was writing a novel. I showed her four or five chapters of what would become 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' and to my surprise she auctioned them off.
If you write a good line, you write a good line, and the best line wins in television. It doesn't matter if you're the guy who gets the coffee or if you're the showrunner - best line wins. That's the beauty of television collaboration.
You have to be good. And keep getting better. For every writer taken on, another is dropped. A paradox: you have to rise to stay level.
Sure, I have advice for people starting to write. Don't. I don't need the competition.
I wrote a novel in my early twenties; I won a high school prize - my short story got published, and I got 50 dollars, which was a huge deal.
The story grew, got way bigger than the contest rules called for, and next thing I knew I had a book.
Every year, the Giller jury is different. You write the best book you can and throw it out there.
As a writer, I'm always aware of the fact that there are so many books out there.
The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers.
Writers are as jealous as pigeons.
You can't go wrong with major life and death stories when it comes to a competition, so I thought I'd have a go at writing one.
I wasn't even in a newspaper office where I was getting assignments in competition with other people. I remember earlier, though, that I knew a young woman who had been published in the New Yorker, and I was so jealous of her. It wasn't exactly a personal competition. I just envied that accomplishment.
And every friend I've got has been writing Mars stories. It was pretty clear I'd never catch up.
I love it when I start a book that is so good that all I want to do is get back to my own writing, in a competitive way.
If you are a young writer today, it's very hard.
No one wants a masterpiece knocking around when your own book is looking for attention.
Part of living, part of becoming a wise man or a wise woman, is to get to that point where you can have a friend for whom you are genuinely happy when he or she has a success. That's tough. Very few people get to that point. With writers it's next to impossible. You can't really bless a writer who's as good as yourself.
When I'm there, it's pure silence. There are other writers there, too, and I get super competitive. I have this weird fear that some guy next to me is writing this amazing novel, so I got to compete.
As soon as I started writing, other writers stopped wanting me acting in their shows - maybe they thought I was going to rewrite them.
For every person who passes on the opportunity to write Spider-Man or Superman, I guarantee there are 5000 hungry writers who would give their eye-teeth to do it. But just because they want to do it, it doesn't mean they are capable of doing it.
