Q and A
Who's your favourite author?
What's the first book you remember reading?
Jane Austen. No contest. She's the only author I re-read, and every five years or so, if I'm fed up or tired I'll read her novels again. It's like meeting up with an old friend – familiar and surprising at the same time. I like her wit and the precision of her writing. I think the moment on Box Hill when Emma is cruel to Miss Bates is one of the most agonising in fiction.
An ancient children's book called Bunny Fluffkins. This had been passed down from my mother's childhood and had thick pages and a fine tissue covering to the very few illustrations. I loved the crackly paper. I suspect the story was not the most riveting in English literature.
What's the greatest influence on your writing?
I don't have a single influence, but what I find most inspiring is energy. If I go and see a good play, I can almost feel the current from the playwright and actors. A really good book has the same effect – I read Star of the Sea recently and just loved its energy and boldness. The same with Dickens. Some people are very influential – when I meet someone very focused, it's like a shot in the arm. And my agent is definitely influential. He sees through any woolly idea or sloppy bit of writing.
Where do you write?
Typewriter, word processor or pen?
I'm very lucky. I have a room of my own in the back of the house, overlooking our little garden and then allotments. There's not much activity outside, except magpies and wrens and a heron that flies over once a day, and the allotment-keepers. There's someone over by the far fence who keeps bees. Inside the room is usually a mess because it's not really just a writing room, but contains my filing cabinet and sewing machine and books and the stuff that needs to go to Oxfam and Christmas presents before Christmas and paper for recycling and letters that need answering and a new shower rail that is waiting to be put up.....etc, etc
I can't think now how I wrote using a typewriter, but I remember getting through a lot of Tipp-Ex. Now it's word processor mostly, or if I'm stuck, or making notes, a pen. I wish I had better handwriting because, like most writers, I love covering a blank sheet of paper. I have a near fetish for fine, crackly paper. A friend found some old, war-time airmail paper in her attic and I love its texture and how it feels when it's written on. But my handwriting is dreadful and a great disappointment to me.
What is your philosophy for life?
Did you always want to be an author? If not, what did you originally want to be and when and why did you change your mind?
What were the first pieces of writing that you produced? e.g. short stories, school magazine etc.
Philosophy sounds a bit worked out. I believe in doing the maximum possible with each moment. This leads to some dreadful cooking as I can never do one thing at a time.
I always wanted to be an actor. Then, when I studied drama at university, I found I couldn't stand the competition. That's the simplest explanation. But I'd always loved writing too. Bizarrely enough, the competition is just as fierce; it's just less overt.
I was an incurable organiser so my first pieces of writing would have been little diaries and magazines produced for clubs I ran in my garden shed with my hapless cousin. I wrote poetry for the school magazine, notably a poem entitled 'Macaroni Cheese'. I remember showing a story I wrote about a tramp to my grandfather, who said it was very good, but what about making something happen? A useful lesson.
