Isn't Tweeting bad for writers? Just another way to procrastinate? Isn't it all simply inane, egotistical chatter?
Back in the early 1990s - that does sound a long time ago! - I was mainly writing about the visual arts, my novels, as yet, were unwritten. I attended a conference - something to do with critical writing in the arts - at which there was a session on this thing call The Internet. Someone said it had nothing to do with writing and, anyway, wasn't it just a purveyor of porn?
Less than ten years later, with my first novel about to come out and another on the way I found the Internet and email part of the writing life - research, sending edits back and forth to publishers etc.Well, Twitter's been here a while now and I've been using it in a modest way for a couple of years. For me, I find it an incredibly useful way of picking up 'industry' information, chatting to other writers, finding out about books and events I might have missed. Of course you can waste a lot of time on it but, equally, you could spend all morning sharpening pencils.That's your choice.
I would urge every writer to at least consider Twitter and how it might work for them. The more working writers tweeting the stronger that community grows.
Scriptwriter Jason Arnopp has looked at Twitter from a writer's perspective and come up with his 10 Reasons Why Twitter is Great For Writers. It's an excellent list as he embeds tweeting into the writing life.
And where did I come across this article? Why, on Twitter, of course.
In between attending the talks on the Taking The Waters weekend, I took time out to experience the real thing. Increasingly, I'm using my phone camera as a visual notebook. That weekend I wanted to record different states of water - textures, the way the changing light plays on the surface.
Though I’ve written a novel about the way water can shape a life, and several watery poems, for me, water means more than subject matter. Proximity to it has become part of my writing process. I try to take regular breaks by the sea or walks by a river. Perhaps something to do with having been born by the sea ...
I won't write directly about these images but, like jottings in my notebook, they'll tune me into something that stirred as my attention was held by the water.
Being by water steadies the gaze, invites a different quality of attention, a stilling of the busy, city, mind. Something about being by water stirs the soup of the unconscious. So much more seems to float up after a period of staring out.
Much in the news recently about the closing down of the last ever factory that makes typewriters. Godrej and Boyce shut down production in Mumbai, India, at the end of April. Apparently, typewriters hung on in India when they had long since disappeared everywhere else.
For me, this information arrived at exactly the right moment. My sister had just asked me if I'd like to have my mother's typewriter. Now ninety and long past tying, mum had dug out her portable Olivetti, bought in the 1960s, and offered it to my sister to. Clearly, mum didn't want to put it in the bin and hoped that Helen would use it.
'I don't want it do you?' Helen asked me. I wasn't sure. Keeping such a bulky, redundant object was at odds with my current need to de-clutter. It was only a few months ago that took my old iMac to re-cycling. But, as I opened the red case, the years dissolved.
Though it's keys are feathery with dust and the case smells of the damp garage it's been stored in for over 20 years, beneath that I catch a whiff of the inkiness of the ribbon, the rubberyness of the platen. Memories flood back: the postman delivering this magic object mum ordered from a small ad. in the newspaper; watching her unpack the parcel, set the machine up on the dining table; her fingers flying over the keys. How does she do that?
I loved writing stories. Could you really get them down so fast and see them in print, and by your own hand - If only I could do that ...
Mum's typewriter. A little dusty but it still works...
Mum had bought the typewriter in order to brush up her pre-children speeds. Not long after it arrived she saw a postcard in the Newsagent's window - a writer wanted a typist to type up a novel manuscript. She sat at the dining table, a pile of handwritten pages to the side of the machine and bashed away, excited that she'd be paid for doing this work at home. I was excited at the thought that my mum was typing up all those words to make it become a book.
It didn't last.
The pile of paper disappeared. 'It's not suitable,' she said, 'I'm not typing that kind of thing.' She never spoke again of the novel manuscript and was wary of postcards in the Newsagent's window. I still wonder who, in our neighbourhood, had been writing a racy fiction?
It didn't put me off. I tapped and pecked away, frustrated that I had to watch the keys, when my mum's fingers seemed to know where each letter was. The way I typed was slower than hand-writing but I loved to see the printed letters form.
Later, home from college for the summer, I travelled to Manchester each day for two weeks to do a crash course in touch-typing. After that, no more watching the keys. Instead, I watched the words fly onto the paper and got my own portable typewriter as present for my twenty-first birthday. Once the Amstrad appeared, well, the rest is history. I'm writing this on my third, or is it my fourth, Mac.
Pre-Tippex - the typewriter rubber mum used, still tied to the string she fixed it to in the 1960s
Still wondering what to do about mum's Olivetti I Googled the word and find that Cormac McCarthy, until a couple of years ago, wrote everything on an Olivetti just like my mum's. And twenty-five year old poet, Claire Askew, who collects typewriters, would love to own an Olivetti. 'Design Icon of the 1960s,' she calls it.
How can I not keep it?
It certainly can't go to the dump as my sister intended. I'll have to find room for it somewhere.
While it's a luxury for me to keep this Proustian object there are some writers who still need a typewriter as part of their process.
Has anyone told Paul Auster there'll be no more typewriters? For him the typewriter is essential he said in a Paris Review interview: 'Typing allows me to experience the book in a new way, to plunge into the flow of the narrative and feel how it functions as a whole. I call it, "reading with my fingers," and it's amazing how many errors your fingers will find that your eyes never noticed.' He famously bought up stocks of ribbons a few years ago. 'I'm living in fear that a day will come when there won't be any ribbons left to buy and I'll have to go digital and join the twenty-first century.'
Looks as if he'll have to go out and buy up a few vintage typewriters. I know his typewriter is an Olympia, subject of the book he did with artist Sam Messer. But if his Olympia ever lets him down I know where he can get an Olivetti in good working order.
"Motivation follows action, not the other way round"
I found this in one of those what's-the-point-of-New-Year-Resolutions articles.
It's so true. And particularly in relation to writing.
After a break, it can be hard to get back into a novel you last looked at in December, or to find those notes you scribbled just before the snow came down - the notes that you were going to turn into a new short story.
You've been thinking about it. You will get round to it soon ... A part of your brain is waiting for the ideal day, the ideal conditions - a clear day with nothing else to do but write. It isn't going to happen.
What small action could you take to motivate you to start that project? The more resistance you have, the smaller the step ... Read through the last draft of Chapter 11 and jot down some notes for chapter 12? Too daunting? Why not at least get out the folder and put it on your desk?
Whatever you decide, make sure it involves action.
If you'd like to read the full article by Oliver Burkeman, from which I plucked the quote, it's here.
The book has won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and is short-listed for more awards. A graduate of the Goldsmiths MA in Creative & Life Writing, she talks here about growing a novel from a short story, finding a way to write about Vietnam and how to get your first book noticed
PJ: In an article you wrote for The Guardian you gave an account of talking to your uncle Tim about his time in Vietnam as research for the book. Even so, embarking on a fiction that explores the inner worlds of two taciturn Australian men is quite a stretch for a woman in her twenties living in London. How did you imagine yourself into the shoes of Leon and Frank?
EW: Writing in a male voice comes pretty naturally to me, I'm not sure why. I suppose I've always been captivated by the men in my Australian family, and so I think I've always studied them, the way they walk and how they unhook a fish. While I was writing them, I'd try speaking their dialogue out loud, and I'd move around the flat like them - a little bit of acting I suppose - very poor acting, but as long as no one else was there to see it, it was helpful.
PJ: Evoking the landscape of Australia - particularly the place where Frank stays - the shack, the bush, the bay - feels like 'necessary writing' something you needed set down, to save. Can you say something about that?
EW: I think childhood memories are more sensory than adult ones, and I suppose this book was my attempt at getting back to that time, when Australia was the most amazing place to me. Even though my feelings towards it may have changed and matured, when I think back to the bird song and the smell of the sun heating up the sugar cane, I still get that small leap in my heart that it gave me when I was very small. It's a really good feeling. The spaces that I wrote about are owned by my family. My grandparents lived and died there. In a way, talking about the landscape and remembering the feeling of being so small and in love with the place, feels like a memorial to my grandparents.
PJ: How did the structure for the book emerge?
EW: Totally without me noticing! I'd been writing it for about two years before it fell into place. I just wrote and re-wrote and played with putting different scenes next to each other, and then the simple idea of alternate chapters emerged.
PJ: So, initially, you wrote in discrete scenes, out of order - did Leon or Frank come first?
EW: Frank came first. I began writing about this guy going round looking for his girlfriend. A flawed character - someone who's done something bad in a relationship - that's what interested me at first. But after about a year-and-half of writing, I had to know more about Frank's parents and his grandparents. That's when I began to write Leon and I thought about using the story of my Uncle Tim's experience in Vietnam. The Vietnam stuff came quite late.
PJ: The Vietnam scenes are vivid. How did you manage that, how much research?
EW: At first, I went to Australia to talk to my Uncle Tim. We sat on the beach, drank beer and he spoke into a Dictaphone. While he was in Vietnam fighting as a conscript in the Australian Army, my mum, his sister, was on peace marches in London. It had never been talked about in our family. He was very generous in telling me his stories. And, I did a lot of reading. I realised I couldn't make that experience my own - I hadn't been there. You're only ever reaching for stuff like that you can't quite get it. I wanted to make the war scenes like the rest of the book - showing a man on his own. What would he have known out there in the jungle? The Australians behaved differently to the Americans; their experience was different to the American experience that we've seen through popular culture - Apocalypse Now. I tried to avoid using words like chopper and napalm.
PJ: When you were on the course at Goldsmiths I encountered you as a writer of short stories - had you begun the novel during the MA?
EW: No, I was all about short stories when we met. I had a short story on the Goldfish on line journal and an agent contacted me through that. She asked if I would write a novel and I said okay, not really thinking I'd be able to do it. But it felt important to concentrate on short stories while I was on the MA, so I didn't start the novel until the course was over. About a month after I'd left Goldsmiths, my agent rang up to ask how the novel was going. That gave me both the confidence and the fear to give it a go. I began to develop Frank from one of the stories I'd worked on at Goldsmiths. There were 3 or 4 points in the writing when I thought 'What am I doing?'
PJ: What kept you going - enough to start and finish a book - once the framework of support provided by the MA was gone? What new framework did you need to construct for your writing?
EW: I'm very lucky to have a partner who's opinion I trust and value. I think that must be quite rare, because it's a difficult thing to find the right person to give you criticism. The MA was terrific for getting you used to that way of reworking stuff, of not being offended but also not necessarily absorbing every little criticism from every person. My agent was also a really helpful reader. Whenever it looked like I was going to give up, I'd sit down and read a favourite book, just think - look, how has he done this? In the end, I wrote in a fairly solitary way, and the thing that's keeping me going with the next book, is knowing that at points it all looks terrible, but if you keep at it things will change.
PJ: Can you tell us about the favourite books you returned to - how did they nourish your writing?
EW: The Riders by Tim Winton. I'd pick up that when I got stuck. I'd re-read the first three chapters, noticing how slowly he lets the plot in. There's no rush to, all-in-one breath, say what the book's about. He lets stuff in gently. Also, The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan, for the atmosphere. It's one of the first books that got me excited about writing when I was younger. And, the climax is unexpected but not a cheap twist-in-the-tale. When I'm writing I like to read short stories - Miranda July, Lorrie Moore, and Alice Munro. These writers have a lightness, that's so important if you write about dark things, sad things. It's easy to weigh down the writing with the issues.
PJ: How did it feel to finally realise the project?
EW: Honestly, it hasn't yet sunk in. I don't know when that happens, it still feels like I'm talking about someone else. Having said that, I enjoy my life now so much - it's such a amazing thing to get paid for doing something you love.
PJ: What's your day job?
EW: I work two days a week in an independent bookshop in Peckham, called Review. It's ideal, really, for writing. it's quiet, and I get to see the finished product being sold. I'm lucky enough that, between my advance and winning the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, I've got enough, just about, to let me work part-time. In the early days it was very different, I worked in PC world, and in an art gallery, and all sorts of different strange jobs, just anything that didn't take too much thinking time away from the book.
PJ: Has getting published changed the way you see yourself as a writer?
EW: In the first six months after publication I've never felt less like a writer in my life! All the way through - getting on the MA course, having short stories published, getting an agent - I felt so much more confident in my standing as A Writer. Now, suddenly, there's this strange feeling of having pulled the wool over someone's eyes. Publicity meant that for a good stretch of time I was either out of the country or doing 'other things' and it was very scary settling back down to try and write another novel. So far though, touch wood, it all still seems to be working.
PJ: What surprised/delighted/shocked you about the process of getting published and getting the book to readers?
EW: Working in the bookshop, I was fairly aware of how much effort you have to put in as a writer if you want people to read your work. So I didn't sit back and expect publicity to take care of everything - I took copies of my book to around 25 independent bookshops in London and gave them a free copy. Where possible I talked with them about their shops, asked questions, that sort of thing. The wonderful thing is, I think I've done really well out of the independents. It was surprising how hard it was to get noticed in the chain bookshops. I think debut authors really need to take advantage of the smaller places where the person at the till makes the decisions about what goes in the window and what gets recommended. The most surprising thing has been how much word of mouth helps too.
PJ: You really involved yourself in marketing the book - can you say a bit more?
EW: I have a fantastic publicist who helped with whatever she could but there was no money, no publishing party. I put aside an amount of my advance to pay for publicity myself. You get one chance. I thought it was worth it. I paid to have 500 beer coolers and bookmarks made with the cover image. I was going to pay for the books I gave to bookshops, but the publisher was so pleased to see I was getting involved, they gave me the books. I threw 2 launch parties in bookshops - Peckham and Mayfair - and gave a beer cooler and a bookmark to people who bought a copy. I invited journalists. And, though I was a bit sniffy about Facebook and Twitter, they've been terribly useful. Twitter got word about my book out there.
PJ: What did it feel like to win a major prize? Has it had an effect on your writing?
EW: It felt wonderful, because immediately all worries about having to get another job to complete the next novel were lifted away. It's such an amazing memorial to John Llewellyn Rhys, that after his death he has helped so many young writers, exactly at the point that they need the most financial help. Since winning the prize I've been asked to write quite a few non-fiction articles, which is not something I've ever been comfortable with. But it's always a good thing to try and tackle things you don't feel confident about.
PJ: What is your writing routine?
EW: I've found I write best in the morning. Which was great when I was doing After The Fire, but since publication I've got non-fiction articles and blogs to write. I find these harder to do than fiction. Now, I do 3 hours of the non-fiction stuff in the morning. After that, as a treat, I work on my book. So it's about six hours on the three days I'm not working in the bookshop.
PJ: Where do you work? Longhand, keyboard?
EW: I work on the non-fiction stuff at home. Getting out of the house is important if I'm doing new stuff for the novel. I've found a few good cafes to work in. I love working the public areas at Royal Festival Hall. I work mainly on a laptop, but sometimes if I'm typing and get an idea for another scene I stop and hand write notes for that. Later on, when I'm working on structure, I need to print stuff out. Then I'm back at home, laying it out on the bedroom floor, cutting and pasting.
PJ: Can you tell us a bit about the new book you are working on? Does it have a title yet? And, are you still writing short stories?
EW: I had hoped to spend some time writing short stories after the first novel, but what I started working on has developed into the beginnings of a novel. It's about a woman from Australia, living in England. She's trying to learn a way of living with something very bad she did when she was young. It's about the nature of forgiveness, about where you go when you don't believe in a religion that re births you, and how you would form relationships when you don't want anyone to know about a life-shaping event. The working title, which might well change, is All the Birds, Singing.
PJ: What are you reading at the moment?
EW: I've just finished Broken Shore by Peter Temple, which is spectacular. It's categorised as a crime novel but it's much more than that. A beautifully written book. And, I've just picked up Fathers and Sons by Alexander Waugh. So far it's very good.
PJ: What would you say give to someone about to embark on a first novel?
EW: Don't think to much about it, just do it. Let yourself off the hook with deadlines - it takes as long as it takes. Don't get bitter, and don't panic.
Click here to hear Evie Wyld read from her book on Woman's Hour.
Amy Sackville graduated from the MA in Creative &
Life Writing at Goldsmiths' in 2008. Next week sees the publication of her
debut novel, The Still Point.
PJ: The details of Edward's Arctic expedition are so vividly imagined - the goggles, the anorak, the diary entries, food rations, bears, sleeping conditions etc - did you have access to a collection of objects or records of such an expedition?
AS: No, but I spent many hours reading and researching historical accounts and contemporary texts, as well as collecting images of the Arctic. The first book I read was Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, which fed into my fascination with the region and my first imaginings of the ice and the light as they change through the seasons. Several incidents in the novel are modified versions of real events lifted from various turn-of-the-century accounts - I restricted my historical reading to that period for the most part, for the sake of accuracy and also to get a sense of the tone for Edward's diary. Nansen's Farthest North, which is cited as an immediate influence on Edward's journey - he sets out to emulate and better Nansen using the same techniques - was essential reading, both for borrowed detail and for his style, wistful and ambitious by turns.
PJ: The Arctic sections are powerful; this feels like 'necessary writing' - what is your relationship to such a landscape?
AS: I regret to say that I have never been there. I am interested in imagined spaces, in mental landscapes. I was drawn to the region, initially, as a space which resists mapping - which shifts and deceives - and the idea of two different responses to that, embodied in the dreams of a couple - a feeling of liberation and awe opposed to frustration and fear. So Simon and Julia's characters, from very early on, were conditioned by those fundamental, opposing frames of mind.
The only comparable
experience I have to draw on is of being in the Alps - a very different
landscape, of course, but it certainly helped to have a sense of how snow
behaves, how light behaves when reflected by snow and ice.
PJ: Your omniscient narrator is necessary in order to hold in view and move between past and present. How did you settle on that voice?
AS: That voice emerged from a short piece
of writing, an experiment with the notion of the omniscient narrator, in which
the reader was invited to observe a couple sleeping, at close range. It was
when I worked out that the couple in that story were the same as the couple I
had been thinking about in relation to the Arctic material that things began to
click into place - much of that experimental piece went into the first chapter,
including the opening line. As the story developed, the narrator became, as you
say, an essential element, allowing me to move between time periods, between
perspectives, and also through the empty house; but it was really an
instinctive impulse in the first instance. The voice enabled the story, rather
than it being a process of working backwards from the material to find a way to
tell it.
PJ: Did you ever consider making the narrator a minor character or one of the main characters retrospectively telling the story?
AS: In
the workshop [the MA at Goldsmiths] people asked if it might be Edward's ghost.
I did hear it as a male voice. It's quite domineering and intrusive at the
start but once that's established it phases out and, at times, overlaps with Julia
imagining Edward's story. Also, given the historical element of the novel, it
made sense to draw on the 19th Century tradition of addressing the reader.
Towards the end there are things that the voice doesn't know, the voice admits
that there are things that are unknowable. One of the first thoughts when
writing the book was the idea of how we know each other, the extent to which
its possible to know each other; and the way we tell stories about ourselves
and each other. I wanted to find a way to tell the story that addressed
that.
PJ: You finished the MA in 2008 - was the novel finished at the end of the course?
AS: I started the novel at the beginning of the course, and it was substantially
finished by the end. It takes me a while to get around to writing, but once I
do, I write quite quickly; I think I do a lot of the composing in my head. Once
I'd worked out two key elements - the circadian structure in the present day on
one hand, and Edward and Emily's story, on the other - the details of the plot
came easily for the most part. So by the end of the course, all the notes were
more or less there, but not necessarily in the right order. The hard part was
the structure, and that was what I worked on with my agent and editor for
almost another year after the course ended - it took several edits to get it
right, to ensure that the balance between past and present was working, and the
shifts between them. It was difficult at first to tear the whole thing apart -
it was initially in three big sections, and has been cut up and reshuffled into
six. But every time I took the plunge and made a massive structural change, I
had a feeling of drawing nearer to a pre-existing shape, a rightness that I was
trying to discover rather than create. It can never be perfect and perhaps
there are other ways I might have done it, but I'm more or less happy with
where everything is, now.
PJ: How did it feel to finally realise the project?
AS: I don't
remember having a moment when I thought 'it's finished!' I had the last
paragraph written quite early on, and when I got to the point of pasting it in,
I knew there was so much still to be done on the book that it didn't feel
complete. And then it went through so many rounds of editing and proofing that
when I came to the last check on the page proofs, it felt quite detached from
me. Having said that, I saw an advance copy for the first time this morning,
and am still having trouble believing that it exists at all and isn't just an
unusually substantial hallucination. It has a map. I'm very pleased with the
map. And the design is absolutely beautiful. Portobello have been fantastic
throughout the process and I'm delighted with how it's turned out.
PJ: Given your academic studies [MPhil, Modernism, Exeter College, Oxford], obviously key Modernist writers - Joyce, Woolf, Nabakov - are your 'mentors'. How did you make the shift from critical, academic writing to such a fully imagined piece of fiction that is so strikingly your own?
AS: I have
never found reading other writers while I am in the process of writing to be an
impediment - quite the opposite; I find it invigorating to return to texts that
I love. I went back to T.S. Eliot again and again while I was writing, I wanted
to work in references in an organic, instinctive way. In some ways my academic
training is helpful; I turned to that way of thinking as I read over what I'd
written, to clarify broad thematic concerns and realise implicit connections
that are not overtly stated (the role of women in the book, and the importance
of surrogate feminine relationships, for example). But I also have to put this
analytical part of my brain to sleep while in the process of composition. When
the book is a finished thing, it goes out into the world to be subject to a
hundred different critical and ideological interpretations. If I attempt to
anticipate and answer every one of those interpretations while I'm writing, to
approach my own work from an academic perspective before it's finished, I'll
drive myself mad.
PJ: So, for you, reading is an organic part of the writing process? Can you say a bit more?
AS: I'll sit over breakfast and read for half an
hour, an hour, before writing. If I didn't read I'd be alone with what I'm
trying to make and I'd lose sight of what the point of that is. Largely it's a style thing, partly
reminding myself why I want to write in the first place. I go back to key
passages I've read hundred of times, to remind myself what writing can
do. Also, reading on a daily basis
everything feeds in, regardless of whether its directly relevant. It's
interesting how those random choices affect what you are working on.
PJ: Life after MA - the framework has gone - what new framework have you constructed for your writing?
AS: I am still in contact with my fellow students from the MA; we meet
monthly to exchange and discuss work. This for me is one of the most invaluable
things to have come out of the course. Aside from that, I fear I haven't yet
found a new, entirely successful framework. Completing The Still Point imposed
one - there were deadlines, and specific tasks to be achieved. Now I'm trying
to start something new, and to find that rhythm again, the discipline and
courage to create from scratch, which is so different from the last editing
stages where you're honing what's already there. I have always kept a journal,
where I think through what it is I'm trying to achieve, and that is useful. I
still use the techniques I learned in your seminars; working in short bursts,
creating exploratory fragments which I may or may not use, and remembering not
to not beat myself up if I don't get it right first time.
PJ: Has getting published changed the way you see yourself as a writer?
AS: Absolutely. Perhaps it shouldn't, but I'm an insecure soul and I need validation. I'm also quite career-minded, so when I gave up having a full-time job a few years ago to focus on writing, it was a scary decision for me that I can now feel is justified. But I'm also now feeling the pressure to write another one.
PJ: What surprised/delighted/shocked you about the process of getting published and getting the book to readers?
AS: I worked in
publishing so the process of actually making a book was quite familiar to me in
some ways. My first meeting at Portobello was a rather overwhelming experience
- before going in, I think I had sort of been expecting to have to convince
them of my worth, so I was somewhat taken aback by their enthusiasm, and by
suddenly being the centre of attention.
The idea of strangers reading my work terrifies me. The idea of my family and friends reading my work terrifies me. The idea of critics reading my work terrifies me. I am considering becoming a hermit.
PJ: Are you still working in publishing? How does the day job
fit in with the writing?
AS: No. When I worked in publishing it was a small company so I had a hand in everything from commissioning and devising new book projects, sub and copy-editing, proofreading, working with designers, picture research, occasionally contributing bits of text where needed... I learned a lot about how a book is made, but it was hard work. There was no way I could do a job like that and have space left in my head to create something of my own. Since then I've worked in various part-time temp jobs, mainly doing general administrative stuff, and mainly in the third sector. It keeps me in pocket, means I don't spend all my time alone with myself, and it's something I can leave behind at the end of the day. I also started teaching Creative Writing this year with the Open University, which I'm finding really useful as a way of staying engaged with the processes and techniques of writing; and it's hard to go on at your students about discipline if you don't have any yourself, so it keeps me working. I'm hoping eventually to move into more teaching and leave the temping behind.
PJ: Can you tell us a bit about the new book you are working on? Does it have a title yet?
AS: No title - I didn't have one for The Still Point until very late, when it suddenly seemed blindingly obvious that that was what it should be. So I'm not too worried about that. It's very early days, but I think it will be very different - which is making me a little nervous. It's first person, there's no historical element, it's a much narrower focus. And it's set in Orkney - I have a grant from the Arts Council to go up there for a research trip. I seem to incline to wilderness.
PJ: What are you reading at the moment?
AS: I'm reading Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,
which was a Christmas gift - I don't know her other work at all. It's wonderful
- a memoir of sorts, drawing on her observations of the natural world and her
reading and all sorts of apocrypha and philosophy. Her descriptions are
beautiful, accurate, startling - she describes a gibbous moon as being 'softly
frayed, like the heel of a sock.' I love that.
AS: I'm not sure I'm qualified to be
dispensing advice, but I suppose I would just say, you will get bored and
frustrated and you will have stodgy patches and days of self-doubt and despair,
but remember what it's like when you find just the word you wanted, when you
write a line that sings, and keep going - and remember it's easier to work with
something than with nothing.
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