Kate Mosse
Orange Prize Readers’ Day: Sadie Jones and Charlotte Mendelson
2 years ago
From the Orange Prize Readers’ Day, Saturday 9 May 2009.
Session 4: Sadie Jones and Charlotte Mendelson: ‘A great book speaks beyond its time, place and context’
Kate Mosse:
What did being shortlised for last year’s Orange Prize for Fiction mean to you?Sadie: ‘The Outcast’ came out in February 2008 and the Orange Prize shortlist was announced only a few months later. The fact that my book had been picked up by the prize was a dream, it was such a great beginning and I felt so lucky. I knew then that I could relax because the book had exceeded all of my expectations.
Charlotte: I still don’t feel like I should be writing, I’m on my third book now and it is hard as I know about everything that can go wrong, I get more neurotic for each book I write! Being shortlisted for the Orange Prize for ‘When We Were Bad’ was exciting because for me it was an affirmation.
Kate: Both of your books are about big families…
Sadie: In ‘The Outcast’ there are two families who are in a mess. People have said that my book presents a negative view of families but families are like that! I’m interested in what people don’t say and the book is also about good people and the incidential crimes they commit against children…
Charlotte: I know adults that are so shaped by family and their experience as a children, they still retain the role of the rebel or the sensible one that they had growing up. Lots of people are trapped living the lives their families expected of them; it is very hard to escape the expectations of your family and live your own life. I wanted to explore that tension and look at how people get away. I was told by an interviewer that my book is about being lonely too though and Sadie’s book being called ‘The Outcast’ obviously explores that theme as well.
Kate to Sadie: How did you decide on the time and place of the book?
Sadie: When I got the idea for the story I saw it as a sort of 50′s melodrama and so many things about that era work for the story. People were rebuilding their lives after two wars and if you couldn’t do that you were a casualty – an outcast.
Kate: Your next book is also set in the 1950s can you talk about your experience of writing historical fiction?
Sadie: My next book is set in 1956 and is about the army in Cyprus. This is a much tougher book to write because it is outside my experience, I have to do a lot more research for this book than ‘The Outcast’. It is hard because just as I get going with writing the story I have to stop to check facts.
Kate: How do you view yourselves as writers?
Sadie: As a writer you have to have a weird arrogance because it is hard to balance that arrogance with a natural instinct for self depreciation.
Charlotte: I don’t write because I want to tell the world my thoughts I write because that’s what I do, I was born to do this.
Question from the audience: ‘The Outcast’ is very cinematic are there any plans to turn it into a film?
Sadie: I’m actually working on the screenplay at the moment! I’m really enjoying writing the story in a different way.
Question from the audience: What are the three things that make a great novel?
Kate: First I think a book has to speak beyond its time, place and context. Second, the plot and the characters have to work as one thing, a great story can only work when it has characters that are alive. Lastly I think with a great book you can open it at any page and any sentence in that book will give you pleasure.
by Karen
Orange Prize Readers’ Day: Diana Evans and Joanna Kavenna
2 years ago
From the Orange Prize Readers’ Day, Saturday 9 May 2009.
Session 3:
Joanna Kavenna and Diana Evans: ‘You have to get out of your own space to discover new stories’
Kate Mosse: You were both winners of the Orange Award for New Writers, how did that feel?
Diana: It was very strange, winning the prize in 2005 for 26a, it was a complete shock, I felt like I had to be a real writer after winning it. In a way the prize got in the way of my creativity, I had to construct a whole new world for my next book and it was a challenge to get away from the outside world and back to the voice inside.
Kate to Joanna: Was it hard to write non-fiction after fiction?
Joanna: It was a relief! I got this great idea and felt that I wouldn’t be writing another failed novel ( I wrote an awful lot of terrible novels before I won the 2008 prize with ‘Inglorious‘).
Kate: How is the process different?
Joanna: With fiction you can be totally subjective and enclosed in yourself and your own reality, you are no longer responsible for a general sense of reality like you are with non-fiction.
Kate to Diana: Did you make a conscious decision to write male characters for your next novel?
Diana: Yes, I made the decision to come away from the female voice and – we are the same! I can write about a man masturbating! You have to get out of your own space to find new stories. The inspiration came from researching dancing and reading the stories of male dancers..I also became fascinated by stories that I came across that talked about dancing and madness. I used to be a dancer in an African Dance Troupe and that has stayed with me, performing before audiences like that takes you to another place and I wanted to write about that. I relished the challenge of getting into men’s heads!
Kate to Joanna: What will you write next?
Joanna: I wanted to finish my latest novel, which is coming out next year, before my second baby was born and I managed that and then I was awarded the prize for ‘Inglorious’ the first book! With the latest book I was looking to do something different, something that cut across time, explored a dystopian future, something with lots of characters….
Kate to Diana: Do you feel nervous about the second book coming out?
Diana: I’ve been through it once now, having the book published and then reviewed etc so I know what to expect this time and I’m excited. I think it is important to try to start a new book before your previous one is published because I like to be able to develop my persona as a writer before I get swept up in the publishing wave – I don’t like to have too much interference from outside.
Joanna: I’m the opposite. I like to hear the readers’ response to my last book before I begin the next. If I have an idea I want to give it time to gestate. I think you have to keep your old and your new books separate, you don’t want to be inspired for a new book and then find yourself caught up in the publicity for the old book.
Question from audience: How hard was it to find a publisher?
Joanna: I found it very difficult, I couldn’t get any of my novels published for years, but looking back I can see they weren’t ready. I think when you have the right idea, when the novel is good it will be published.
Diana: Getting an agent was harder for me but once I had acheived that it all went quite smoothly.
Kate: It is a tricky time for writers at the moment in that it is easier to sell new writers but the market conditions are difficult. But what you have to do as an unknown writer is actually write your novel – a good idea won’t do! You have to write your novel and be proud of it, you need to actually write to be a writer!
On courses and publishing:
Diana: I did the MA in Creative Writing at UEA and I went to do the course with my novel already completed. Work-shopping your writing can be hard on the ego and I felt I needed something to hold onto, an objective I was aiming for. I did the course in order to polish and finish my novel.
Kate: Courses allow people to take themselves seriously as writers. I run courses in order to to teach people the tools of writing, you can’t teach imagination. And courses are not just for those who want to be published, some people simply want to learn a the craft of writing so that they can express themselves.
by Karen
Orange Prize Readers’ Day: Catherine O’Flynn and Clare Allan
2 years ago
From the Orange Prize Readers’ Day, Saturday 9 May 2009.
Session 2: Clare Allen and Catherine O’Flynn: ‘When you get published everyone buys you notebooks for Christmas!’
Kate Mosse: Where did you find the inspiartion for your books?
Catherine: For ‘What Was Lost’ the inspiration was very much the place – the Merry Hill Shopping Centre, as I worked there. That place drove me to write, it fascinated me, got under my skin…this coupled with a story I heard about a girl being seen on the CCTV but never seen again and never found.
Clare: With ‘Poppy Shakespeare’ I knew what I wanted to write about and then the writer announced herself, I remember the morning she arrived. She dictated the whole thing, I was driven by that character; I felt she existed.
Kate: You both took a big risk for your debut novels in that both of you had narrators readers couldn’t trust – a child and a patient on a psychiatric ward..
Catherine: The character of Kate, that 10 year old’s voice wasn’t hard for me to find, but I didn’t want it to become quiet or twee. I wanted to create a three dimensional character, not a victim or an innocent which is how children are often portrayed, I wanted her to be a vivid character.
Kate to Clare: With Poppy Shakespeare, there is a sense of grief but it is also hilariously funny, can you talk about the use of humour in the book?
Clare: I love situations where you aren’t sure whether to laugh or cry! For me humour is for dealing with tradegy and loss; on a psychiatric ward it is how people cope and show their humanity in a very controlled environment – in that situation humour is all you have got.
Kate: Has winning literary prizes changed the way you view yourselves as writers?
Catherine: When something good happens I always think something awful must be lurking around the corner! It can be intimidating bit also incredibly encouraging, it made me think ‘I should stick to this’!
Clare: Winning the Orange Short Story Prize was wonderful in that in helped me find an agent. But with the attention and the chaos that comes with winning a prize, it can be hard to focus back on that second novel.
Catherine: You have to wait for the dust to settle. I was lucky as I wasn’t committed to writing a second novel so I could decide when to do that. I waited until something interesting came along, something that bothered me, something that I wanted to explore and get to the bottom of.
Clare: To try and regain my focus, I searched the internet for strategies. The best one I found was the one that said ‘only write for 30 minutes a day’ – following that guarantees that I write for at least 2 hours!
Kate: Re: the reactions to your work from overseas, was that surprising as your books are so firmly rooted in their locations?
Catherine: It is very surprising to realise that people beyond those you know, or in my case ten people who worked in HMV, have read your book…but I think that there are places like Green Oaks Shopping Centre all over the world.
Clare: It made me aware of how much readers brings to your book….I offered them a way into the world of a psychiatric ward but it was up to them what they did with it.
Kate: Have you found that you have been called upon as a spokesperson on mental health issues, rather than a novelist?
Clare: I can understand the need for that and yes that has happened a lot, but my need is to be a writer. I find it hard to comment on mental health because I am not an expert.
Question from the audience: When did you feel that you had ‘got’ your story?
Clare: When the main character arrived. I felt that this was someone I wanted to spend time with. I remember singing in the car for the whole journey, the day that happened!
Catherine: I’d been thinking about how to write my story for 2-3 years and I was happy when I felt I’d finally worked it out but this was quickly followed by a deluge of negative thoughts:
‘Oh no I have to write this now’……’What if I never finish it?’…….’What if it becomes another failed project?’
Question from the audience: How do you write, what physical processes do you use?
Catherine: I write mainly on a computer, but I also write in notebooks. Once you’ve been published everybody buys you a notebook, I got millions for Christmas and I keep starting off in a new one and then I find I have lots of notes all over the place in lots of different notebooks – I am not very systematic!
Clare: If I reach a critical part of the story I’ll write by hand – this stops me getting distracted by the internet, but when I am writing in a new voice I will use the computer so I can separate the character from my handwriting.
Kate: Writers use many different ways of writing and there is no trick – the ‘right’ laptop won’t help!
by Karen
