Literary Birthday – 1 June – Colleen McCullough

Colleen McCullough Quotes

1. I have an editor in my head. That’s why I can’t read Harry Potter, because Rowling is such a lousy writer.
2. It’s a dead giveaway of an inexperienced writer if every character speaks with the same voice.
3. My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn’t counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow.
4. I will never use swear words unless they’re necessary and unless I feel that is what the character would have said in those circumstances.
5. Once I’ve got the first draft down on paper then I do five or six more drafts, the last two of which will be polishing drafts. The ones in between will flesh out the characters and maybe I’ll check my research.
6. I think explicit love scenes are a turn off unless it’s the kind you read with one hand.

Colleen McCullough was an Australian author best-known for The Thorn Birds, which sold 30 million copies, and the Masters of Rome series, which was a thoroughly researched fictionalised account of Julius Caesar’s Rome. She was known for her diverse genres and meticulously researched historical fiction. ‘McCullough was named a “living treasure” by the National Trust of Australia in 1997 and appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2006.’

Source for image: Simon & Schuster Author Page, Photograph Louise Donald

by Amanda Patterson

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