Writers Write Is All About Writing
Writers Write Is All About Writing
Margie Orford

Literary Birthday – 30 September – Margie Orford

Happy Birthday, Margie Orford, born om 30 September 1964.

Margie Orford Quotes

  1. I’d never have become a writer if I hadn’t read Wuthering Heights. Imagine being able to create the electricity between Cathy and Heathcliff? That’s what I wanted to do.
  2. If you can’t be a trapeze artist then you might as well try writing. Your failures will be less spectacular and you won’t break your neck trying it.
  3. I’m a storyteller first and foremost, but murder, cruelty and power have been central to stories since the first fire in the first cave.
  4. Plot, though, is what gets your reader’s heart rate going, it keeps them turning the pages, it keeps them awake. I always think of the two – character/place and plot as two sides of a single sheet of paper. You can look at both, but they are indivisible.
  5. I don’t believe in stopping working just because I’m tired: I stop when what I’m working on is as perfect as I can make it.
  6. I storyboard my books while I am writing – that gives one a clear sense of place and the relationships between people. South Africa is so striking visually – the quality of the light, the drama of mountains and sea and, further inland, of deserts, is impossible to ignore. I want people to see what I see, to understand how full of contrasts this place is.

Margie Orford is a South African journalist, film director, activist, and author. She writes crime fiction, children’s fiction, non-fiction, and school text books. She is best known for her crime novels featuring Clare Hart, which include Like Clockwork, Daddy’s Girl, and Water Music. They  have been widely translated. Her most recent novel, The Eye of the Beholder, was published in 2022. She has also written Love and Fury: A Memoir. She is an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford. She was a Community Fellow at IASH, University of Edinburgh in 2020 and 2021. She was the John Tilney Writer in Residence at the University of York in 2015 and is a Civitella Ranieri Fellow and a Fulbright scholar. She is an Ambassador for PEN International. Follow her on Instagram.

Souce for image: Author’s website
Source for quotes

by Amanda Patterson
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Posted on: 30th September 2015
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