How To Edit Your Own Lousy Writing

Learn to read your work with the eyes of a stranger and you will pass through the Valley of Failure towards the Mountain of Success.

Essay 24th October 2017

Zippo, Delay Unit, Fender Esquire

Poetry Issue 18, Volume 2: Spring 2011

Julian Gough

BIO: Julian Gough's next novel, Connect, will be published by Picador (UK), and Doubleday (US), sometime in 2018. Or 2019. Who knows. Books are hard. His next children’s book (and his masterpiece), Rabbit & Bear: Attack of the Snack, will be published by Hodder Children’s Books in early 2018. The first Rabbit & Bear book, Rabbit's Bad Habits, was shortlisted for an Irish Book of the Year Award in 2016, and has been translated into 15 languages, including Nepalese. Nepalese! He has written many short stories, three novels, a book of poetry, two radio plays and a stage play. In the process of doing so, he has won the BBC National Short Story Award, and been shortlisted for a Sainsbury’s Children’s Book Award, the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award, and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize (twice). He also wrote the weird and wordy ending to the most successful computer game of all time, Minecraft. He has taught creative writing in Trinity College Dublin, the University of Limerick (just up the road from his parents), and Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (ranked the #1 university in Asia), where he is currently International Writer in Residence. He has a website, but it's covered in weeds because he is lazy. He is @juliangough on Twitter. Feel free to say hi.