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I receive a great many letters from readers, students, teachers about my books and although of course every letter is different and individual, very many of the writers do ask the same questions. These questions also come up regularly at author events at Literary Festivals and so on, so I have put together my answers to some of the most Frequently Asked Questions.
When did you start to write ?
I always wrote. I don`t remember a time when I didn`t. Although I was no keener on home work and exams than most children. I loved English lessons at school when we were asked to write anything and especially what were then called Compositions. I wrote stories and very bad poems, and when I was 8 I wrote a play for my class which was acted at Assembly. (At a School Reunion a few years ago one of my old friends actually produced her copy of this play !) I never wanted to be anything else but a writer – apart from the usual actress/nurse/show jumper phases when very young.
How did you get your first novel published ? Did you have a lot of rejections ?
I began my first book when I was at school doing first GCE and then A levels. I had written a letter to a then well-known novelist, Pamela Hansford Johnson, asking for advice and she had said that a writer should just write – and that when I was ready, I should write a book. I was ready, so I did. It was a novel called The Enclosure, about a middle-aged theatrical couple going through a traumatic time in their marriage – not the obvious subject for a teenager living in Yorkshire and then the Midlands. I knew nothing about it, just imagined what it would be like. All novelists play ‘let`s pretend.’ I felt there wasn`t at that stage anything at all in my own life that I would want to turn into fiction.
I sent the novel to Pamela Hansford Johnson when it was finished, she liked it and recommended that I send it to Hutchinson publishers. She wrote a letter to them first, telling them about it. They liked it and made an offer to publish it straight away. So I didn`t have to go through the rejection stage. I was very lucky. On the other hand, the book got a lot of rather odd publicity along the lines of ‘Teenage schoolgirl writes sex novel’ ( the latter was not remotely true !) and it took me a long time to get over that and settle down to the routine of being a writer, not a young person who had had a lot of publicity.
How do you write ?
With a pencil or a biro, on lined A4 pads. I use a PC for office work, letters, doing odd book reviews or articles, but I could never do real writing, novel-writing, onto any machine. I need silence, and to think, as it were, through my pen.
Do you write every day ?
Yes, when I have a book on the go.
Do you discipline yourself to write for so many fixed hours or what till the mood takes you and inspiration strikes ?
I just get on with it, in the morning mainly, and for bursts of time, with breaks – say 2 hours, and then a long-ish break, and then another hour. I sometimes make notes, jot down things to do with the next day`s work, in bed at night but I can`t do anything serious then. Inspiration is what happens when you have that wonderful experience common to all writers – one minute you haven`t an idea in your head for a new novel,
And are not, perhaps, even thinking of writing one at all. The next minute, an idea comes, almost fully formed, into your head and that`s the start. After that, it`s steady work. I can`t wait to get on with a book once it`s under way.
Do you plan everything out in detail in advance ?
No. I have a rough idea for what the whole is about and a rough idea of what`s coming next, but I trust from day to day that it will just appear. I hear the words and phrases as if someone is speaking them aloud in my head. Some writers plan out things in full. There`s no rule.
Where does your inspiration come from ?
Too easy to say I have no idea. Sometimes that is true. But many ideas come from the atmosphere I feel in places, from my past and my childhood, from some feeling or emotion which attaches itself to a place which in turn begins to give rise to certain characters. The plot – what happens next – is almost the last and the least of it and comes about in the writing.
No. I never have. It`s a very specific form and I haven`t the talent.
You have written children`s books. How and why
?
I go into that whole subject in a separate section of this website. Go back to the home page and click on CHILDREN`S BOOKS.
Which is your favourite of your own books ?
That is like saying which of your children you love best ! I think my best books, the one I am still most pleased with, are STRANGE MEETING, IN THE SPRINGTIME OF THE YEAR and AIR AND ANGELS. I am proud of THE WOMAN IN BLACK (see the website www.thewomaninblack.com), too, because I think it works as a ghost story even though it`s a full length book and it`s hard to sustain a form like that over a whole long book. If I had to choose one that would be kept and all the others would have to be sent into oblivion, I would select IN THE SPRINGTIME OF THE YEAR.
Have you written any books you now do not like
?
Yes. I think THE BIRD OF NIGHT is a bad novel, though there are some powerful scenes in it. But I just don`t believe in the central character any more and I think it`s a pretty unlikely story. Oddly enough, it won me the Whitbread Prize and was shortlisted for The Booker !!
My first two novels – long out of print – are no good, but I excuse them because they are juvenilia and the best I could do as an apprentice writer.
Which do you prefer writing, fiction or non-fiction
?
Fiction, every time. It uses a different part of you – writing novels is about the use of your inner self your imagination, you at your most instinctively creative. Non fiction is written with a rational mind, it`s about planning and exact use of ideas and words. Satisfying, but not as fulfilling.
Who are your favourite novelists and which writers
have most influenced you ?
T he novelists I re-read and could not imagine life without and who have
influenced me in the very best sense are Dickens, Thomas Hardy and Virginia
Woolf. I enjoy the ground-breaking 18th century writers like Swift and
Sterne, and I hugely enjoy reading Trollope but he has been no influence
on me whatsoever. I also learned a lot from Graham Greene about the art
of writing fiction. I am a huge admirer of some – not all –
E.M. Forster, principally HOWARD`S END. I think the best contemporary
novelists now writing are William Trevor, John McGahern and John Banville
(and, for some reason, they are all Irish !) I greatly admire Fay Weldon
and Jeanette Winterson. But I read a lot of non-fiction, and try never
to read modern novels when I am in the middle of writing one – another
author`s style, if not their ideas, can be very catching. There are so
very many exciting young contemporary writers – those under about
35. I admire many of them, though I`m not influenced by them at all.
You have written books about the country, autobiographical
books and etc. Why don`t you stick to novels ?
Partly because I`m a professional writer, I enjoy writing, it has always been my way of making a living, and I have often been asked to write things other than novels. Partly because one can`t be writing novels 12 months of the year, year in year out. Why not do other things if they appeal ? Also, Graham Greene always divided his fiction into Novels and Entertainments and I tend to do the same. One can`t always be writing with deep seriousness from the depths of one`s imagination and sub conscious. Sometimes, it`s a case of some bread-and-butter work, or something for fun – and why not ?
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