Literary Birthday – 4 July – Deon Meyer
Happy Birthday, Deon Meyer, born on 4 July 1956.
Deon Meyer Quotes
- The more you do it, the better you become. There is nothing that improves your writing more than just sitting down and doing it.
- Read, read, read. See what is happening in the genre you plan to write in. Study and analyse what the really good authors are doing, and how they are doing it.
- I still believe that is the best way to learn the craft of writing. Short stories teach you a lot about story structure – and you have limited space to develop character and plot.
- As a novelist I am fascinated with the deadline, with the role of time as a mechanism to increase the tension.
- I mostly follow the dictum ‘conflict is the mother of suspense’, so I’ll be looking at as many sources of conflict for the protagonists as possible within the parameters of verisimilitude.
- When writing a book, we get to spend eight or ten or twelve hours every day, month after month, with characters who don’t exist. And during this mysterious process, they slowly turn into real flesh-and-blood people.
Deon Meyer is a South African novelist who writes in Afrikaans and is best known for his internationally acclaimed crime fiction. He has published 17 novels and two short story collections, with his work translated into 28 languages and published in more than 40 countries. Meyer is the author of the popular Benny Griessel series and also works in television and film. His novel Heart of the Hunter was adapted into a Netflix film that reached over 11 million views within two days of its release. His latest book is Leo, and Skorpio is set to be published in English in 2026. Follow him on Instagram and visit his website here.
Source for image: Deon Meyer / Photograph credit www.deonmeyer.com
by Amanda Patterson
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