The American author talks about growing up queer in a family of ‘wolves’, poverty and class in the US, and the 19th-century writers who inspired his latest novelBrandon Taylor writes quickly. “I can type almost as fast as I can think,” he says. The first draft of his debut novel, the Booker-shortlisted Real Life, took him five weeks; last June he challenged a writer friend to a race. The friend had been 30,000 words ahead on his book, with Taylor going from a standing start, but by August, Taylor had finished, while his friend was still ploughing on.Since Taylor says that “everybody in my family dies young”, one might assume that this is a rush to seize the day. But writing, he says, is also “the most fun I’m capable of having”. When he discovered the internet aged 12, via his parents’ dial-up modem in rural Alabama (the web being “this beautiful land that I could only visit temporarily because somebody wouldn’t pay the phone bill”), Taylor used to produce 8,000 words a day, writing five collaborative stories at once on roleplay forums. “That was good training for having stamina as a writer,” he explains, a genial 34-year-old in a blue denim shirt sitting at a table in the Guardian’s London offices. “As long as I have a good sense of scene or character, when I get a good first line there is nothing standing between me and the end.” Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2023-06-03 10:00:28 UTC ]