When I’m working on a novel I type the initial draft first thing in the morning. Really: first thing. For preference, I have a cigarette ready-rolled and a coffee percolator loaded the night before; then I simply roll out of bed, fuel up and set to it. I believe the dreaming and imagining faculties are closely related, such that wreathed in night-time visions I find it possible to suspend disbelief in the very act of making stuff up.
Managed profile
Not claimed by Will Self
Will Self has not joined FLAPSS and has not endorsed it. This page is a reference record assembled from published interviews and public remarks. Every answer below is a direct quotation with the source and date shown next to it.
WS
Will Self
Novelist, essayist and journalist
United Kingdom · b. 1961
Arts and letters
About
English novelist and journalist whose books include Great Apes, How the Dead Live, Umbrella and the essay collection Junk Mail. He has been a professor of contemporary thought at Brunel University London.
3 answers
Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.
Every quotation above is reproduced from the source shown beside it and has not been edited. Will Self did not write these answers for FLAPSS. Request a correction or removal.