Passa Podcast: Solvej Balle
Which rules govern literature? How to maintain order in the empire of the imagination?
In this podcast we find out how writers do it. How do they manage to make their characters do what they want? How do they keep their ideas under control? Where does creative license end and discipline start? What is most important: talent or craft?
Every writer has their own ideas about “the profession”, and many have written about it. Numerous famous authors have invented their own writing rules. In this podcast, our guest puts a couple of these axioms to the test, and at the end of the conversation they come up with one writing rule, one literary law of their own.
Episode eight: Solvej Balle, the Danish author staying in Brussels as a writer in residence at the international house of literature Passa Porta, where she is working on volume 6 of On the Calculation of Volume, a mesmerizing cycle of what will be seven novels.
The Writing Rules of Solvej Balle
Marguerite Duras
Edna O’Brien
Norman Mailer
Rachel Cusk
Anne Tyler
Balle’s Law
Never leave anything on the cooker if you’re in writing mode.