Jojo Moyes
Jojo Moyes
Jojo Moyesis an English journalist and, since 2002, a romance novelist. She is one of only a few authors to have twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association and has been translated into eleven different languages...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth4 August 1969
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I write in all sorts of places; it's a legacy of my time as a journalist, where I could turn out copy in a hotel corridor. But I have a little office that I rent in my local town, and that's my ideal place.
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I started writing novels by not thinking about actually writing a whole novel - that felt altogether too daunting. I thought out a rough idea, then wrote chapter by chapter, and then by the time I'd hit 40,000 words, it was a challenge just to see if I could get to the end.
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I love 'To Kill A Mockingbird' - it seems to offer up new layers every time you read it. I also love Kate Atkinson's 'Behind The Scenes At The Museum' - that's the book that started me writing.
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I find my best writing time is actually 6 A.M., before the detritus of the day - the fish fingers and the school uniform and dogs and bills - have had a chance to clog up my brain. I can usually get 500 words done before 7 A.M. But it is difficult, and the Internet, and social networking, are terrible timesucks.
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I think there is an awful lot of technology for technology's sake. I have yet to be convinced by my husband that persuading our mobiles to talk to our computers is going to be quicker and more straightforward than scribbling a note in our kitchen diary.
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I wrote three books before I got one published. Most writers do. Have faith, and know that with each work you are getting better.
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My writing life has included the struggle to bring up three children. What I do three or four times a year is take myself off to a hotel room to unblock a problem.
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Marriage is a decades-long experiment, conducted mostly in private; a test of will in the face of unexpected obstacles.
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Unless you sell millions, I think it's very hard as a writer not to feel anxious about what you put out. I always feel I could do better.
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What love is depends on where you are in relation to it. Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air - you exist within it, almost unnoticing. Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all consuming - a physical pain.
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I have always written. I was one of those kids who would always fill exercise books with girls and telepathic ponies.
characters
If the characters are compelling, readers will follow anywhere.
family life
I always say that in any roomful of people, I could hive a novel out of any one person's family or life story.
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I always imagined a writer was someone who lived in an attic in Paris, but my mum instilled in me a belief that I could do anything - so I ended up writing my first novel while working nights as a news reporter.