06/04/2026
How do you keep writing without worrying about what people will think?
For the award-winning novelist Shyam Selvadurai, the answer is simple: focus on the work first.
“I write my book in a sort of cocoon, and then figure out what to do about its reception.”
In a world where we're constantly sharing, posting, and seeking feedback, it can be easy to let other people's opinions into the creative process too soon. Sometimes, the most important thing a piece of writing needs is space to grow before it's seen by anyone else.
What about you? Do you prefer to share your work early, or keep it private until it's finished?
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Shyam Selvadurai is the author of the novels Funny Boy, Cinnamon Gardens, Swimming in the Monsoon Sea, The Hungry Ghosts, and Mansion of the Moon. His work has won the WHSmith/Books in Canada First Novel Award, Lambda Literary Award, the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award, a Canadian Screen Award, and the New York Cinema Independent Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the DSC South Asia Literature Prize, the Trillium Award, the Aloa Literary Award, and the Premio Internazionale Riccardo Bacchelli.
Shyam Selvadurai will run the Literary Fiction 1 workshop at the Humber School for Writers Summer Workshop. Register or learn more about it: https://bit.ly/3RLXZLr
