Three Gifts is both heartfelt and funny. Which authors have influenced you when writing tragic and comedic scenes, and how do you balance these different tones?
Thank you. Perhaps not a fashionable choice but I think Rachel Joyce writes heartfelt and witting well. I thought The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessey was brilliantly poised and moving. I like how she draws the emotionality of an ordinary life.
I think the early books of Chris Brookmyre are really good examples of comic writing. He writes witty characters and lets the story evolve alongside them rather than trying to sustain comic prose which I think can be really limiting and distracting.
And I think Nicole Krauss (The History of Love) writes tragedy or at least profound sadness with a beautifully light touch. I suspect I have come away from all of those authors (and plenty more beside) and tried to aspire to at least the spirit of what they are doing.
For what it is worth I think a lot about the emotionality of stories. I’m really interested in what happens when we try to look beyond what people say they think and look at what experiences, emotions, rage or trauma form those thoughts.
Anyway, back to the question I think humour is a window on profound feeling. I think
it tends to act a bit like a pair of sunglasses on a really bright day. It makes other things which will otherwise hurt the eyes a bit more seeable? Or at least, it helps us hold our gaze for a little bit longer?
If you could read one book again for the first time, which would it be?
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Yes I know it is bleak and relentless but it is a poem to fatherhood as well I think. To parenthood perhaps? And I don’t believe there are enough poems to such things.
I think in a lot of ways Three Gifts is a novel about two important but undiscussed emotions. Gratitude and relief. I think The Road is too, it is about the pursuit of relief, regardless of what that might mean. It is a story of a man who embodies a sense that his life is in service to his child.
If we are getting a bit exposing here I might notice that I have been a nurse, a nurse lecturer or a teacher for all of my working life and it may be that I have got to the point in life where I seek out art that somehow articulates the value of ‘service’? Makes sense of it as a thing of purpose and as I get older I think I see that idea fading a bit?
Is that rambly? Sorry. As an afterthought can I add, don’t read The Passenger by the same author. Just don’t.
What’s your writing routine, do you have any specific rituals when sitting down to write?
I know what I ‘should’ say. I should say I start at the same time every day and I don’t let myself get distracted by the internet or the cat or urgently needing to remember the title of a song I liked in 1997 and I do 3000 words a day and I don’t edit it and I never eat crisps, rarely wander off to look at the garden, never forget the name of the character I introduced four days earlier and always finish at the end of a particular scene
In truth I write in bursts. I get into something and wander around like a man looking for something he can’t remember the name of because his head is full of characters he has made up and is now pretty much married to or at the very least slowly falling in love with (her name is Dawn Hardcastle by the way, please keep an eye open for her in an upcoming book provisionally titled ‘The Geometry of Silence, ’ and don’t tell my wife.
I write for maybe 2-3 hours now whereas once I wrote for 5. I drink tea when I get stuck and I always, always exercise on a writing day. Usually swimming, often gym, other times I walk round the local cemetery talking silently to the characters I take there. It is a bit chaotic when I write it down but it doesn’t feel like that. I fit what I do around work. I suspect I change my routine according to the nature of the project I am doing, and I cannot bear being indoors for very long. For fear whatever it is I cannot quite capture might crush me.
Are there any other gems from the world of indie publishing that you would recommend to our followers?
Meadowlands Dawn by Jo Beall (epoque) is a very good novel exploring the space between the political world and its violence and the inner world of someone looking to make sense of themselves, their struggles and their transformation.
Am I In The Right Place by Ben Pester (Boiler House) is an inventive, witty and original collection of short stories.
Should We Fall Behind by Sharon Duggal (Bluemoose) is a subtle, elegant and moving story about those who may just be out of view.
A Bad Decade For Good People by Joe Bedford (Parthian) Like a good indie album, a book that explores a familiar culture with a fresh and urgent voice.
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