The GBR Interview: Emma Donoghue - shapeshifter

A new concept presented itself to me via a tweet the other day (in between Chris Addison and Robin Ince's constant twittering). Musicians have a “jam”. Artists continually “doodle.” But what do writers do? “Word vomit” was presented as a solution, but I’m not sure I like it.

Whatever the term is, all writers must do it. Get ideas and start bashing out some words around it, with no real intention for it to go anywhere or to take any real form – just playing.

Which is why Emma Donoghue’s ideas struck a rather large chord for me when we chatted. “I don't sit down with a format in mind. I try to respond to my material. I listen to an idea and to what it asks me to be. When I began it, I thought Slammerkin [Donoghue’s 2000 breakthrough novel] was a short story. It turned out it wanted to be a novel”

This whole idea struck me right in the forehead. Too many times, people go stright to "novel." They shouldn't. Just start with an idea and follow it wherever it takes you. It might just be a word vomit. Or it mind end up being a radio play.

Here’s a writer who has is bang in the middle of a long and successful career. She’s shapeshifted through turns at being someone who writes straight fiction, historical fiction, short stories, stage plays, radio plays – you name it, Emma Donoghue has had a crack. “If I ever come up with an idea that seems like it’ll work best as an opera, I guess I’ll have to learn how to write an opera.” This was a joke, but I absolutely believe she’d do it.

I believe it because it’s entirely apparent Emma Donoghue loves what she does. “It’s such a pleasure to write. I try to stay open minded, but novels are still my default position. You get to call all the shots. I’m like a child playing when I’m on a novel.” Having recently finished reading Donoghue’s latest volume of historical fiction short stories, Astray (GBR review to come soon...), I can testify that she’s pretty good at spinning mini tales as well.

That’s not to say it’s all easy for her. Astray is a set of stories with such ranging voices, such different feels, that it’s slightly exhausting to navigate. Each story strikes a true tone, so much so that Donoghue has been labelled one of fictions greatest ventriloquists. “That’s not something that comes easily,” she told me. “I do a lot of research into each character, every word needs to be true. I have to work at it, otherwise they they’d all end up as chatty and Irish.” Donoghue is chatty and Irish. That’s why that comment made sense.

Donoghue changes styles, perspectives, eras and method throughout the collection, perhaps an echo of her varied career to date. Successful as that career has been though, she only really arrived at the household-name level in 2010 with the Man Booker nominated Room.

I wondered if Room’s success has started to irk her, like the band with a twenty album back catalogue who are continually forced to sing the breakthrough hit they had twenty years ago. “I’ve thought of that analogy myself,” said Emma, (who I felt I could call by her first name, now that we’d bonded over a commonly conceived analogy). “I’m not sick of it though. It opened up a new audience for me, and I’m still doing readings of it now. In thirty years time, I may be a bit sick of it, but not yet. I knew from the start it was the strongest idea I’d ever had, so I had a feeling it would do well. People really care about Jack [the boy at the centre of Room]. I get letters from people saying they’re just like him, that they can identify with him. It’s been very rewarding.”

I segued our chat awkwardly away from Room and towards something I’ve been preoccupied with ever since Will Self told me he couldn’t care less about the reader experience. I can’t seem to interview an author without asking their opinion of Self’s doctrine. So I succumbed again. “I try not to allow the reader to have any censoring effect. I try to hear them at a technical level. I think of the reader as me, but me who hasn’t read the book yet.” That’s a neat idea. Me who hasn’t read the book yet. I like it. And it seems to work for Donoghue.

My half hour was up. I hastily asked my so what are you reading now final question. “Bring up the Bodies,” came the reply. “Then I’ve got a book by Zadie Smith lined up. And I’ve recently finished another Lee Child.”

I put the phone down with a strong sense of a writer who loves what she does. A writer who continues to find new ways to interest herself in her material. And a writer who isn’t afraid to follow that material into new mediums. A writer, in short, who should be admired for her approach every bit as much as for her talent.

The GBR Interview: Alison Moore - from short stories to the big screen (possibly)

Alison Moore - headshot tastic

In the second of the GBR Interview series, I spent a highly enjoyable half hour on the phone with Alison Moore, author of the Man Booker Prize shortlisted The Lighthouse.

I’m a little bit obsessed with short stories at the moment. Who better to inflict this obsession on than a writer whose career has been made up predominantly of short stories.

Before her debut novel exploded onto the scene, Alison Moore was one of the large crowd of writers who spend their time submitting short stories to magazines. She did, to be fair, have a great deal more success than most.

“I really enjoy short stories. They’re very satisfying. They taught me how to write. They fit my approach - I write quite slowly usually, and often go back and redraft things over and over, adding in more where I can. Some stories come out in one go over 24 hours, but they tend to have a different energy. I often start them with the spark of an idea, without knowing where they’re going to go, and just take the journey with the character. It’s how I’ve always written.”

For more than ten years, Moore has plugged away in her spare time at short stories, picking up various awards en route, and eventually developing enough of a reputation for a small independent publisher (Salt Publishing) to take a punt on her first full length novel.

So for a writer used to short stories, how did she approach The Lighthouse? “I had little windows of writing, and I knew I had to make the most of them. When it starting to come, it came piling out fairly quickly. I didn’t plan it out chapter by chapter, but I had a good idea of where it was going.”

This lack of meticulous planning is perhaps a strength of Moore’s. It gives her a freedom to leave things out. I’ve talked about it before; the balance needed in leaving enough unsaid to engage the imagination of the reader, without confusing them with major omissions. Will Self doesn’t concern himself with such trivialities. If the reader is confused, it’s not his fault. But Moore seems to pay this balance more heed.

“You do have to write what you want to write - you can't be worried about what your parents will say if they read it. You can't think too much of the reader when you're writing, but I do like to set the imagination of the audience going. Everything in The Lighthouse leads to a very definite ending, but I didn't feel the need to spell it out. There are a few strands of the story I leave the reader to wonder about. I had to be mindful, not keep things too hidden away. Fairly obvious conclusions can be drawn, but it seemed to fit the feel of the story and of Futh [the main protagonist] to build in this slight area of doubt.”

It shows a lot of confidence in a debut novelist, to leave so much between the lines. Perhaps the fact The Lighthouse was picked up by Salt Publishing before it was 100% finished fed this confidence. Perhaps her years practicing her craft as a short story writer did it. Whatever, it clearly works. Man Booker shortlistings don’t come to poorly played gambles.

And not just Man Booker recognition. Interest from the big screen as well. Just initial talks (aren’t they always), but the possibility is there. “I’m excited by the prospect of a film being made from The Lighthouse. I’m interested to see what someone else’s treatment of the story will be. I’d love to see what a good director can show me. I’m very mindful that any film would belong to the director. Their take might be rather different – I’m not precious about it.”

I believe her. Moore seems a very likeable sort of writer. Not the serious, fragile artiste I’d expected after reading her very literary, very melancholic novel. Rather, a writer who loves writing – someone who has kept it as a hobby for over a decade and is now treating the rest of the world to a talent which has been well honed.

The success has meant changes, of course. “I’ve been invited to speak at the Nottingham Festival of Words at the Lakeside Arts Centre. I was invited by the director, to whom I was a PA for many years.”

That must have been a mind bender, right? To while away at short stories in your spare time for years, and then suddenly be asked by your boss to come in as an honoured guest?

Staff at The Lakeside Arts Centre show their
support with Alison Moore Masks. Creepy.

Not a bit of it. “It’s a very lovely relationship, the one I have with the Lakeside. They’ve all been incredibly supportive of me. It’s all happened very quickly.”

And long may it continue. I’ll tell you the reasons I liked The Lighthouse when I get the review up soon, but for now, believe me when I say Alison Moore seems a writer deserving of recognition. A writer who simply enjoys writing. A writer generous with her time. A writer appreciative of the applause.

But above all, a writer with undeniable ability.

The GBR Interview: Glen Duncan – the danger of headshots

That’s right. GBR does interviews now. Edinburgh got the appetite whet. You seemed to like it (I have the graphs to prove it). So let’s do this a little more often.

The first non-festival interview is with Glen Duncan. GBR regulars (I know how you are) know exactly how I feel about Glen Duncan. Man-crush. He’s up there as one of my favourite living authors.

But I had to keep this pro. Keep my head. Be a book blogger, not a fan. So (of course) I opened the interview by telling him how much I love his work. “That’s very kind of you to say.” A gracious response, and when we both got over the awkwardness of the early gushing confession, we settled into a revealing chat.

I’d caught him off guard. “Actually, I’d forgotten you were going to call. Don’t worry though, that’s not unusual for me.” It turned out I had no reason to worry. He needed little prompting to speak intelligently. Entertainingly. Honestly.

In fact, it seemed almost like I was listening to a Glen Duncan spoken word book, all entirely off the cuff. I know this because of my notes. You know when you sit through a lecture or an interview or a meeting or whatever, you paraphrase what’s being said into your notes? You’ll translate the general point being made into your own language, using your vocabulary rather than the speaker’s.

Looking at my notes, I know I didn’t do this when speaking with Glen Duncan. I know I didn’t do this because there are some phrases in my notebook that clearly came from him, not me.

“I’m fascinated by the human capacity to bear suffering and still honour the bond of life.”

“All big cities give you the opportunity to self destruct.”

“Short stories are bursting off the pavements – there’s a human stink to London that’s appealing.”

 “Life is amazing; we need to be reminded.”

That’s Duncan. Even when caught unawares by a surprise telephone interview with a blogger he’d almost certainly entirely forgotten about, he still spoke how he writes. Thoughts came out fully formed and deeply considered. He has a natural turn of phrase which makes you think he doesn’t need to try too hard to achieve the prose I’ve grown such a fan of.

Despite the talent though, Duncan doesn’t live full time on the sunny side of Easy Street. He’s had (and continues to have) his challenges.

He picked up the pen (or opened the laptop, or whatever) to start I, Lucifer when down to his last £50 in the world. And flirting so closely with the breadline informs his approach to rights as well. He drops all artistic pretension when negotiating film options for his books, going unashamedly for big studios over art house treatments. “I need to pay the bills. Give me some money; Barbara Windsor can write the screenplay for all I care.”

He’s also faced the challenge of almost any writer inclined towards the literary – the difficulty of building an audience. It’s a challenge that has seen him work to change his MO in recent books. “I’m not a natural plotter. My books usually have more talkers than doers.” But in attempt to reach more people, Duncan is working hard to insert more plot to his books. It’s an approach which gave rise to The Last Werewolf, a book Duncan sent his agent off to pitch to the publishers with the last minute whim to “tell them it’s a trilogy.” They bought it, and the deal was done. Duncan was on the road to becoming a different kind of writer – a genre writer who did books in threes.

He only partly succeeds in this mission. He still turns out unmistakeably Glen Duncan books. No doubt, he’s drifted slightly away from the pure literary fiction of Hope and Death of an Ordinary Man. But he’s still in sight of the literary shore. He may write about werewolf adventures now, but he does so with a wit, intelligence and complexity of character that bear the hallmarks of a cross-over writer. Someone capable of bringing good writing to a mass audience.

We spoke about other stuff as well. About how film is dying. “People aren’t looking to movies for depth of experience anymore – they’re looking to shows from places like HBO as the dominant narrative.”

About his Roman Catholic upbringing. “My grammar was formed by the trappings and architecture of Roman Catholicism. It’s why I drift towards the magic in my imagination.”

About what books can do. “All literature worth its salt is concerned with how we manage to get through our lives. About people who survive and people who don’t.”

We ranged and we detoured and we chatted. For 30 minutes, we covered quite a bit.

That damn headshot

It’s a conversation which has (finally) cured me of the last obstacle in my Glen Duncan worshipping. His head shot. The one that made me bill him as unbearably smug early on. It’s an awful headshot. He has silly hair in it and a silly faraway artistic expression on his face. But that isn’t Duncan.

He was honest with me, a trait he admires. He talked of the moment he realised he needed to work harder at reaching a bigger audience. “It’s so important that I have an honest agent. I’d written seven literary novels. My agent told me straight that if I did another one, it would be difficult to publish. So I went for a page turner instead.” He didn’t throw an artistic strop. He didn’t go shopping for another agent. He went away, knuckled down, honed his plotting skills, and wrote The Last Werewolf.

He’s so far away from smug. I’m not saying he’s on-his-knees humble. But he is open. He’s keen to continue growing. He’s interested in and open to the world. He’s not afraid to work hard at what he does.

None of which comes across in that headshot, but all of which is true.

And if that’s not enough to get you on the Glen Duncan band wagon, maybe this is. I tried to draw him out on common themes amongst his books. After skirting around it for a minute or two, Duncan became blunt.

“Listen,” he said. “I always write about the same things.” He then reeled them off without pause for breath. “Love, sex, memory, betrayal, forgiveness, cruelty, compassion, death and survival. With jokes and friendship thrown in so readers don't feel like killing themselves at the end of the ride.”

If you don’t want to read about that stuff, go find another blog to read. We’re done.

THE COMMON QUESTION: I’m going to ask all authors in the GBR Interview series the same question; what was the last book you read. For Duncan, it was Fahrenheit 451. “One that had been on my reading list for years but that I only got around to recently.” I’ve read it too. I’ll tell you about it sometime. Glen Duncan and me, we both liked it. Which I’m hoping means we’re now best buds.

Tallulah Rising, the sequel to The Last Werewolf, is available in hardback and coming out in paperback on 4 October 2012 (and will be reviewed on GBR imminently...)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Talulla-Rising-Glen-Duncan/dp/1847679498