This is largely because they each take a contrasting approach to the mysterious forces of creation. Graeme Simsion is a plotter:he works out exactly how his books are going to go before he starts writing. Lee Kofman is a pantser:she sits down and writes and just keeps an eye on what is unspooling from her deeper consciousness.
InThe Novel Project,Simsion reveals the techniques that helped him to write his bestselling trilogy ofRosie books. Some of them are adapted from theories around how to write a screenplay (his first novelThe Rosie Project began life as a film script).
Step by step,he takes you through concept,synopsis,brainstorming your story,organising it and reviewing it. Only then do you get to the first draft. And then there are more steps. He makes the process sound almost as simple and straightforward as an Ikea diagram – though,of course,it will take much longer than knocking together a bookcase,and you might lose or gain a few screws on the way.
Simsion is sometimes disarmingly candid about discovering what worked and didn’t work for him. Kofman,a novelist,memoirist and writing coach,takes that candour to another level in her bookThe Writer Laid Bare,which is as much a writer’s memoir as a writer’s guide.
She confesses to a writer’s block that lasted for years:still writing,but stuck in what she calls “nonesty time”,when she was out of touch with how her writing process worked. Crippled by anxiety,she was trying very hard and experimenting with techniques similar to Simsion’s,but with disappointing results.
Kofman’s way out of “nonesty time” involves dealing with the terror of a first draft by attacking the page in fast and furious typing sessions. The speed induces a temporary loss of self-consciousness,she writes,“making way for more visceral ways of perception”.