1. Do you come from a literary background?
Absolutely not. Both my parents were keen readers and there were books in the house, bedtime stories and visits to the library, but I didn’t know any real in-the-flesh writers, and I saw them as special people. Although I wanted to write stories as soon as I was able to read them, it didn’t seem a realistic ambition. We were an ordinary family and I felt too ordinary.
2. What writers did you enjoy reading as a child?
The first book I vividly remember was called ‘Seven Days with Jan’ – I can’t remember who it was by, but would dearly love to find a copy. It was about a young boy in (I think) Holland whose father owned a market stall. I can vividly remember one scene: it’s Christmas Eve and Jan is running through the market just as it gets dark, the lamplight shines on a pyramid of tangerines in their crinkly paper. I could see the scene and smell the tangerines and feel the excitement of Christmas Eve. That, I think is when I really understood the magic of words on a page. I loved Mary Renault and Henry Treece, anything about boarding schools (particularly the Chalet School series); the Pan Books of Horror Stories and I read my way through the works of Dickens when I was quite young too.
3. Did you write as a child?
I loved writing almost as much as I loved reading, and I used to tell my sister stories in bed (we shared a room). There was a long saga about a woman called Mrs Garbage Disposal whose hair was rotting away because she wore too much make-up. Maybe I should have layed off the Pan Horror Books!
4. How did you get started as a writer?
I can’t remember. Eagerly! It was something I was good at at school – maybe the only thing I was confident about. I used to find writing comforting.
5. Do you find writing easy?
It varies. Some days the words just flow out, but you can’t depend on it. When it’s easy it’s the most wonderful and fulfilling activity – but when it doesn’t work it’s hell.
6. Describe your working day.
I do a lot of teaching (of creative writing), so my routine varies depending on my other commitments. But let’s say it’s an ideal day and I have no teaching: I get up about 7.30, shower, do some yoga, eat breakfast, walk the dog and start writing at around 9-9.30. I write until lunchtime. In the afternoon I read or go out or do something like editing rather than actual first draft work – there’s only so much of that I can do in a day. It’s almost unheard of for me to write in the evening.
7. Do you do much research for your novels?
It depends on the type of novel it is. I researched into religious cults for Chosen – part of this was memory work (which I would count as research). One of my brothers was involved in The Divine Light Mission when I was a young teenager and I would visit him in his Ashram and I carry some memories of that, and of how the experience affected him. I read a really interesting book written by a former Moonie about how to rescue family members from a cult, which explained how the brainwashing process works – fascinating.
8. Please guide us through the stages of one of your books – the ideas, the planning, the drafts, working with an editor, etc.
Again, this varies. Ideally an idea comes along and sticks (most of them don’t) and then other ideas seem to cluster around it. It’s a mysterious process. The connections between the ideas is where the energy to start the novel comes from, prickles and questions in my mind, a feeling of fullness – quite physical actually, almost like a mental pregnancy When I’m ready to start- and the gestation can take anything from weeks to years – a line will pop into my head, either the first or one fairly near the opening. This will give me an idea of the voice, person, tense etc. Then the characters come and live with me. Or in me. During this time I research using personal experience as much as possible as well as books, the internet etc. And then I spend about 3 hours a day in bed with a hot-water bottle if it’s cold, and tea, and write long hand until it’s really going well. The bed thing is a sort of trick, so that my body doesn’t think it’s at work but being pampered. It’s also a sort of dreaming, writing, and bed encourages an appropriate dream-like state. Later I will sit upright and do a second draft onto my computer and then usually several more drafts before I’m happy. Then comes the work with an editor …
9. Do you show your work in progress to anyone?
No. I only show my husband and occasional friends when I’ve gone as far as I can alone.
10. How did you manage to fit writing in with other demands on your time? Are you good at managing your time?
You have to be to be a writer. I was with Hilary Mantel once when someone asked me how I managed to write with 3 small children. ‘She neglects them,’ was her reply! But they’re all safely grown up now and none the worse as far as I can tell.
11. Have you any special advice for someone wanting to write a book?
Read and read and read, write and write and write and don’t be afraid to write rubbish first, you will!
12. How do you relax?
Cooking, walking the dog, reading and I’m afraid, watching too much television. Oh and a glass of wine doesn’t go amiss.
13. Who are your favourite living writers?
Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Zoe Heller, Jonathan Franzen, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Tim Winton, Shirley Hazzard, Ian McEwen. Oh I could go on and on.
14. Who are your favourite dead writers?
Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Patrick Hamilton, Jean Rhys, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym, John Updike … and on and on, again.
15. What do you like best about being a writer?
I get a tremendous thrill when it’s going well. And I like managing my own time and wearing whatever I like.
16. Is there anything you don’t like about being a writer?
I can be very scruffy and anti-social. When I’m deep into the first draft of a novel, it’s hard to make conversation, or get very interested in anyone or anything else.
17. Have you ever had a work rejected?
Yes. Don’t go there.
18. How did you first get published?
After years as a secret and rather guilty writer – guilty because I was making no money and taking time away from my children – I went on an Arvon Foundation Course. It was hard to find the money and hard to tear myself way from my children – the youngest was only one – but I was determined. It was a great week and one in which I made a mental shift from feeling like a person who wanted to be a writer, to feeling that I actually was a writer. This first opportunity to share my work and measure it against it that of others and to have it read and evaluated by the tutors, Hilary Mantel and Clare Boylan, had a wonderfully liberating and galvanising effect on me. After the course, Hilary, who’d enjoyed the beginning of my novel, offered me the chance to show it to her agent, which, needless to say I accepted. He took me on at once and very quickly found me a publisher for Honour Thy Father, my first published, (but actually third) novel. The other two I look back on as apprentice pieces.
19. Do you hang out with other writers or stay away from the literary world?
I live with a writer and have several friends who are writers – but I don’t think we think of ourselves as ‘the literary world’. I’m not sure what that really is. I have writer friends and non-writer friends and all are important to me.
20. Do you enjoy meeting your readers and talking to them?
Very much so. I feel very grateful to anyone who reads my novels and interested in hearing their reactions.
