Literary Birthday – 8 February – Adam Marek

Happy Birthday, Adam Marek, born 8 February 1974.

Five Quotes (from Seven Motivational Tools Every Writer Needs)

For years, the first thing I saw when my alarm went off at 5.57am was a photo of Haruki Murakami stuck to the side of my chest of drawers. He had a big speech bubble coming out of his mouth saying, ‘get up and write Adam’.
If I didn’t have a regular commitment to myself, I would make excuses and then feel guilty about it. I write every day from 6am till 7.30am. I start at 6 at the weekends too, and while I’m on holiday. Getting up at that time was agony for the first three years or so (I really like sleep), but now the habit is set so hard I do it automatically.
If your writing space is a paper-work swamp, you’ll be amazed at the liberation offered by a well-ordered filing cabinet.
Write the book you would be most jealous of your best friend writing.
Break down all your big goals into smaller goals, all of which are specific actions that you can take, the smaller and more specific the better. Make sure that your first step is something you can do today.

Writing Advice (from Making Writing Matter)

Write regularly and relentlessly. Never think you’re good enough. Never give up. Don’t invest all your happiness in getting published – it can take a long time, and then right away you automatically invest your happiness in the next time you get published. Enjoy the process – its pains and its delights. Decide right now that you are a writer – it’s much easier to write knowing that you’re a writer, than trying to write as someone who wants to be a writer – confidence shows on the page, but be humble too. Enter competitions – deadlines are great motivation. Go to book festivals and see other writers read their work and talk about it. Read interviews with writers. Study their methods, then find your own. Find something unfamiliar in the familiar and show it to the world because we all want to see it.

Visit Adam’s website to find out more

Adam Marek is an award-winning English writer of short stories that combine the surreal and absurd with every-day life. He is the author of the short story collections: Instruction Manual for Swallowing and The Stone Thrower. He won the 2011 Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship.

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