An excerpt:
Aspiring authors who struggle to steer clear of hackneyed cliches in their writing can breathe a sigh of relief, after it emerged yesterday that even Booker prizewinners can find the odd "flickering log fire" slipping into their writing.
Ian McEwan, it turns out, has a triumvirate of friends whom he entrusts with his novels before anyone else, with the poet Craig Raine scolding him whenever his writing becomes too formulaic (the pair will mark FLF, "flickering log fire", in the margins of each other's work whenever it falls into cliche). McEwan won't even let his friend and fellow novelist Martin Amis near his books before completion, preferring to trust it to Raine, Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash and philosopher Galen Strawson.
Via Justine Musk.
Leave a comment