Deborah O’Brien’s advice for writers

Deborah O’Brien is a teacher, visual artist and author of non-fiction books, articles and short stories. Her debut novel was the 2012 bestselling Mr Chen’s Emporium and her fourth novel, The Trivia Man, will be released in June 2015.

In episode 16 of our top-rating So You Want to be a Writer podcast, we asked Deborah (among other things) if she had some advice for aspiring writers. Here’s what she said:

“I love a quote from Wordsworth that I always remind people about, he said something to the effect of, ‘Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.' That just gives me goosebumps because I think when you write from your heart, from your emotions, it almost always works. When you write from your head maybe not so much.

“The other thing I’d say is to any aspiring writer is if you want to write, don’t procrastinate. I have people who come up to me after a talk and say things like, ‘I’m going to write a novel when my kids finish school…” or, ‘…when I retire.' I say to them, ‘Please, it’s never too early to start.’”

You can listen to the entire interview with Deborah via our podcast page. On there you’ll also find a transcript of the entire chat. Deborah’s website has details of all of her books to date.