Write-Off with Francesca Steele

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Andy Weir

Season 1, Ep. 2

Andy Weir is best known for his novel The Martian, a very clever and funny book about an astronaut stranded on Mars, which was made into a (2015) Ridley Scott film starring Matt Damon.


Andy had two failed novels behind him before he self-published The Martian and even when it became an e-book bestseller didn't think to find an agent because earlier attempts had left him feeling like he wasn't good enough. (An agent an traditional publisher later approached him.) We talk about Andy's struggle with rejection and about his new (third published) book, Project Hail Mary, which is also a very funny and inventive space mission story.


Many thanks to Scott Elliott for his editing advice (and sorry for the tinny audio in this one, Scott!) and thanks also to Robin Stannard for my lovely logo.


You can find and buy books by all my guests at https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/francescasteele


Find me on Twitter: @francescasteele #writeoff

More Episodes

1/26/2023

Alan Garner

Season 3, Ep. 7
Last year, Alan Garner became the oldest person ever to be shortlisted for the Booker prize, at the age of 87, for his novel Treacle Walker. Alan has been writing novels and other books for more than 60 years, many of them rooted in the folklore and mythology of Cheshire where he is from. His first novel The Weirdstone of Brisingamen had people calling him the new Tolkien and he received an OBE in 2001 for services to literature. Among Alan’s books is his incredible memoir Where Shall We Run To, in which he describes his childhood. He was a very sick child and spent days, weeks, staring at the wall of his bedroom during the second world war, thinking and dreaming, and perhaps sowing the seeds of becoming an author years later, But he also describes the pain of being cast out of his community when he got into grammar school. A rejection that still seems to pain him today and which feeds into the type of writing that he does. Alan has an unusual writing process, that often involves years of what he calls gestation, where he barely writes at all, waiting for the subconscious part of the brain to come up with the goods, and I think there’s something to learn from this - that a writer’s work really isn’t all done at the desk, and that patience isn’t just a virtue but a necessity. I loved chatting to Alan about writing swear words on the first manuscripts he was throughly dissatisfied with, thinking T.S. Eliot’s wasteland was a load of rubbish and giving up academia to write even when he had no idea whether he’d be any good. Do come find me on Twitter - @francescasteele - or Instagram - @francescasteelewrites - I'd love to hear your stories about self-doubt, rejection and – of course – success!