This woman likes hearing authors talk, whereas I mostly can’t get them to shut up.
Going to author talks has let me steal little bits of writing advice and approaches that I can use in my own work, including “don’t be afraid to put whatever you’re currently really really enthusiastic about into your work and see if the story fits around it” (I don’t think Jasper Fforde said that in so many words, but that’s certainly why the Crimean War is such a focal point of the Thursday Next series). Since someone always asks an author how they deal with writer’s block, I’ve got hundreds of techniques to try next time I’m in a rut, from “finish in the middle of a sentence the day before” to Kuang’s “listen to some music and try to construct the movie trailer in your head”.
