This much I know: Laureate for Irish Fiction Sebastian Barry

The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is to keep going. To persist. To keep remembering that the joy of it is in the making of it, not in the fame. And you’d better have an absurd level of self belief as writing can be incredibly challenging.

The sense of pride that you feel the moment you finish something can be followed by horror that it is a pile of malodorous rubbish.