Ned Beauman is a full-time novelist. At the age of 25, he's seen his first novel Boxer, Beetle released through Sceptre, an imprint of the publishing house Hodder & Stoughton. Yes, we're jealous too. His second book is due out in 2012. He tells IdeasTap how he did it...
I’ve been trying to write novels for as long as I can remember – since I was about four or five and it still involved word processing machines with a screen about as big as my finger.
I finished my first novel when I was thirteen, in my summer holidays, and although it was a bit dreadful it was also valuable because it meant I already had 70,000 words behind me. I finished another at University, about an evil theatre company. Then, as it became clear that nothing was going to happen with that one either, I started Boxer, Beetle.
A friend was working at the literary agent Lutyens and Rubinestein. I’d sent her the second book with no success, but when I showed her 50,000 words of Boxer, Beetle, she passed it on to her bosses. After I finished, they circulated it. I got an offer from Sceptre the next day.
It was useful having a personal connection, but they’re not a charity and they’re only going to take it if they can sell it. Lutyens and Rubinstein still read everything they receive. Even if it’s in crayon, they’ll read it. So knowing someone can be a short cut, but I like to believe that in the long run it wouldn’t make any difference.
I think to write well you need to feel like the stakes are really high. If you feel like this is definitely what you are going to do with your life, like there’s no other option, then when you sit down to write you’ll take it as seriously as you need to.
As far as new technology and the web are concerned, I don’t think they’ll make any difference to the structure of publishing. If you start a great blog then of course it can get you published, but if you write well enough to start a blog like that then you can get published anyway.
Someone from The Bookseller magazine emailed me to ask my opinion about authors who use Twitter. I replied that an author needs to keep some kind of exclusion zone round his mental processes, that if I’m ever obliged to re-open my account I shall update it by sending typewritten Tweets by second class post to someone at my publisher, who will add them on my behalf.
Everyone on Twitter descended on me. These things only last an afternoon (because it’s Twitter) but for that afternoon it was everywhere. Of course I was trying to be provocative. You only get quotes in articles if you say something interesting. But at the same time I sincerely think that no author should be on Twitter. It is so constant, so public, so demeaning to everyone involved.
I have this romantic idea that writers should be better than the rest of us. I’m not saying I’m better than anyone but my heroes – Nabokov, say, or Don Delillo – were and are people who were able to do things that no-one else had ever been able to do before. Which doesn’t make them ethically better people or necessarily good company, but I want to be able to look up to them.
Do I wish DeLillo was on Twitter? No, that would be grotesque: the worst thing that could ever happen to my relationship with his books. I’m not DeLillo and I never will be, but I think that whatever we’re doing, we should aspire to be like the people who inspired us to get into it.
Ned Beauman was talking to Seb Emina.
Read an extract of Ned's book.
Image copyright Nick Seaton.