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Submitted by visitors to this website

Posted by Hana

October 16th 2010

Dear Mr. Nicholson, I can only imagine what courage and diligence it must take to earnestly write what you know, discover what you do not know, and to pen the sum total and send it into the unknown for all to read. As you have, I want to write -about love and about people - but first I must understand how others outside of myself work. Yet, every time I begin to write, I seem only to be absorbed in expressing myself! When did you transcend your own busy thoughts to be the vessel through which other lives and stories could be told? How do you open yourself to this process? Does rising early help? If possible, I would like to receive a reply without my question or its response being posted on your website. Of course, I accept this is not my decision once I send this out. Thank you for your thoughts. Hana

William Nicholson responded:

I can only reply to you via this site, I'm afraid. But it's a good question. I think the answer is, we all start with ourselves, and in a sense, never leave ourselves. We remain our own best subject. But as you grow older - and it is about age, I think - you learn more about others, their very otherness, simply by being around them and opening yourself to their feelings. I don't think I have ever managed to transcend my own busy thoughts. But I have perhaps let those thoughts busy themselves with curiosity about others. I have to admit I spent the first ten years of my writing life writing, unsuccessfully, about my own failed love affairs. Those works also failed, but all the failures have been enormously valuable in the longer run. We grow, as writers and as people, by trying and failing and reflecting on our failure.

Posted by Tessa

October 15th 2010

Dear William Nicholson, Hi! My name is Tessa, and I am an eighth grader in middle school. I have started a new blog, From The Bookshelf of T.B. It's all about book reviews for young readers, such as myself. I just recently reviewed your book Seeker. I would appreciate it if you could please go on my blog and read my review. I would love any feedback or suggestions that you may have. You can reach my blog at www.ftbotbblog.blogspot.com. Thank you very much for your support! -Tessa

William Nicholson responded:

Great review. If you ever get the time, do read the two books that follow Seeker. You'll find a whole lot more gets explained.

Posted by jan

October 14th 2010

okay, so i was in a secondhand bookstore when i saw a copy of the novelization of Shadowlands by Leonore Fleischer. I know the story is yours so I immediately bought it. Then I was shocked when I saw that the main character is C.S. Lewis. I mean, Clive Staples Lewis is a real person. then i looked at the spine of the book and it was written in there that it was fiction. i was a bit confused. C.S. Lewis? Fiction? Is it really the story of C.S. Lewis or you just made it up? Is Joy Gresham really his "sweetheart"? Is it true that he was once an atheist? and i would just like to ask if the lines in there (e.g. why, if a good God made the world, why has it gone wrong?) are lines made by you or by C.S. Lewis? If they're yours, it's sad that some people have those lines credited on C.S. Lewis and not you. and another question, is this novel written by Leonore Fleischer any good? I mean, I want to read a book of yours, not a book adapted from your work. i am currently reading it and it's kinda boring, so not your style of writing.. sorry for the heaps of questions.hope you care to answer them. i'm just this super fan of yours. HAHA and sorry if i won't let my friends and classmates borrow my copies of the the wind on fire trilogy. i know it would have been your pleasure to have your books read because writers write to have their works read but i just won't take the risk of letting them borrow the books and return it to me with folded pages and broken spine. i hope you understand. i put your books on the shelf along with my harry potters. i'd rather have them rot on their own than get damaged because a million hands touched it.

William Nicholson responded:

The novelisation of Shadowlands is nothing to do with me, it was commissioned by the film company. I'm sure it's a good piece of work, but to be honest I have not read it. I feel a bit peculiar about it. My own work - the play and movie - is based on a very real person, and sticks to the facts as we know them, but there are many gaps which I have filled with my imagination. The lines of dialogue are all written by me, but only after a deep immersion in the writings of the real Lewis.

Posted by david attrill

October 12th 2010

Hi again Silence - so it's over then - just thought you might like to see the review of our Katherine Howard production in Oz - http://www.stagewhispers.com.au/reviews/katherine-howard Thanks again for providing the opportunity to make Henry multidimensional - all the best David

William Nicholson responded:

I looked at the review - and the picture - and had a real shiver to think that my play has lived, thanks to you all, so far away. Congratulations and thank you.

Posted by Elliot

October 9th 2010

Hello, just wanted to add my voice to your chorus of admirers. Your books are amazing, and they are so good i might swear in this email if not for all the kids. The Noble Warriors was about my favorite series when i read it in Seventh Grade and it's still up there. It's a great book for spiritual searchers, it's like a spiritual reboot. Also i love how widening the ending is, it certainly widened me, and i love the concept of the world being jango. Because it's about the only philosophic concept that makes sense and provides meaning simultaneously, and it doesn't conflict logically with others, it's a perspective, and a true perspective. And your version of humans becoming gods is about the only one that seems right, by not scorning the earth but by still saying we can grow spiritually. I know someone who's a god like that. Full of love. Well, if there's any excuse for me proclaiming you a philosopher king, which is obvious flattery, it's this; the world is undoubtedly more jango than any of us can imagine. I recently finished reading Firesong and it is also great, i love so many of the characters. One character i especially love is Rufy Blesh. Do you think some of him went into Seeker? Like you weren't done with his character because he didn't have a very major role and so parts of him were reincarnated through your subconscious? Like a part of you that needed expression? Also i like the i-assume-random semi-arcane references to Fibonacci numbers and the Virgin Mary in the Canobius episode. Sorry about sounding exceedingly crazy and /or overbearing in this whole "question". By the way, i have a theory about the relationship between your two trilogies. While they're both great, i think they're too similar for readers who've read one to read the other without comparing it to the first one they've read. That would be why most people who rant about the Wind Singer can't really get into the Noble Warriors. One more question; as a fifteen year old who's read your two trilogies, which of your books do you think i should read next? Would The Society of Others be a good idea? It looks really interesting from its blurb on this site. Thank you for listening to my ravings! Keep writing!

William Nicholson responded:

I must admit the references to Fibonacci numbers and the Virgin Mary are not intentional on my part. I'm interested in what you say about the similarity between the two trilogies. I think I felt as I was writing the Noble Warriors that I was extending the range of my ideas - that it would most naturally follow from the Wind on Fire, and satisfy an older readership. What next to read? Yes, do try The Society of Others. I think you'll love it. That book really does have buried secrets.

Posted by T.C.T.

October 9th 2010

I hope you are aware Mr Nicholson, that I will not be the only one to realise that Crash is HEAVILY based on the film 'Network' (1976) and that the Times, the Guardian and the Telegraph plus several critical magazines shall be duly informed of your plagiarism unless you can provide a significant reason for my not informing them. I mean, Gods sakes man, you've even appropriated some of the lines from the film! "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Do you follow up with "I'm a human being god damn it, my life has value!"? I hope my little attack here is misguided, rather than find that such a prolific writer as yourself is become a plagiarist.

William Nicholson responded:

A strange post. A joke, presumably? If not, I do hope you'll contact the newspapers you mention. Meanwhile I hope you'll get a chance to see my play when it opens.