Author Birthday – 20 October – Monica Ali

Happy Birthday, Monica Ali, born on 20 October 1967.

Monica Ali Quotes

1. When I was growing up, I always had my head in a book. Novels were an escape (from a tense household, from loneliness); they were my only means of travel; they schooled me in ways that school couldn’t. People talk of ‘losing yourself’ in a novel. As an adolescent reader that’s exactly what I was often longing – and able – to do. The more I disappeared the better. I think that’s why I write now, to have that experience of immersing myself in another perspective on life.
2. Don’t write what you know. This rule, I realise, is liable to cause confusion, consternation, even panic. Because we are always being told the opposite – to write what we know. It is the single most destructive piece of advice that is commonly bandied about.
3. Write the book that you want to read. Ignore all trends and fads in publishing. By the time you’ve written your own version of the trend, it may well have vanished in any case, and the audience with it.
4. End each writing day at a point at which you are eager to find out what happens next.
5. Immerse yourself in your protagonist… what I’m recommending here is something akin to method acting. If you succeed in doing that, in beginning to see the world through their eyes then you will do yourself a massive favour because you will find that many other aspects of technique, miraculously sort themselves out. Point of view, plot, detail, style, dialogue, setting, and so on.
6. Be observant, and be curious. Writing is a solitary occupation but we also need to be in the world, or we won’t have anything worth writing about.
7. Plan your ending. You probably hate this one. Novelists almost always seem to claim that they make it up as they go along. Even when they’ve just sat on stage and explained in great depth all the research and planning that went into the book. No, I don’t understand how that adds up either. You’ve got your brilliant idea for the opening. How does it end? If you’re relying on the muse to get you there then you may be sorely disappointed.
8. Do whatever it is that enables you to settle into your work. Everyone always wants to know about writers’ routines and rituals, but what works for one writer probably won’t work for another. So create your own rituals, if it’s helpful.
9. Writing is hard. You’ll never be satisfied with what you do. So if you don’t have to, then do something else. If you do have to, then nothing will convince you to stop.

Source for quote 1: FAQs and 2-9: Bridport Prize

Monica Ali is a bestselling British writer of Bangladeshi and English descent. Her work has been translated into 26 languages. She is the author of five books: Brick Lane, Alentejo Blue, In the Kitchen, Untold Story, and Love Marriage. Ali writes primarily in the literary fiction and contemporary general fiction genres, with works that explore immigration, identity, cultural conflict, and domestic relationships She has been nominated for, amongst others, the Booker Prize, the George Orwell Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and in the U.S. has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She has taught creative writing at Columbia University, New York, where she was a visiting Professor, and from 2015 to 2018 she was Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Surrey. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2019. Ali was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2024 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

Source for photograph: Author’s website

by Amanda Patterson
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