1. When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
I really can’t remember. I must have been very young. Probably it goes back to writing essays at school, when I realized that I had a certain facility. People liked what I wrote. I drifted into journalism at university - although I never became a full-time journalist – and wrote my first novella and a few poems around the same time. None of which were published, of course, and rightly so.
2. Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?
Ideas pop into my head all the time but they rarely stay there for very long. They generally get weeded out. The idea for “A Fool’s Pilgrimage” came from a fascination with the character of Falstaff. I was always frustrated when he was killed off in Henry V without making an appearance. Continuing his story was an intriguing idea, so I went with it.
3. What do you think makes a good story?
That’s a very tricky question. I think you need strong characters and also a satisfying resolution. There’s nothing worse than being left hanging at the end of the story with a feeling of “Yes, and…?”. You also have to create a world that is immersive without bombarding the reader with detail. It’s tempting to add that the story should have a strong plot in the classical sense but I don’t think that is always so important – life is a series of episodes that flow into each other, without a definite beginning or end.
4. How long does it take you to write a book?
In the case of “A Fool’s Pilgrimage” about 35 years, although I did take a few years’ break from time to time. On the other hand, I once wrote a short story in a couple of hours that ended up being broadcast on BBC radio. The short answer is that it takes as long as it takes. I’m a bit of a perfectionist even though my work is far from perfect. My wife has even suggested that I might be slightly autistic. I will just carry on revising and revising, tinkering and tinkering, until I’m reasonably happy with it.
5. What do you like to do when you're not writing?
I like to read, take photographs, try to produce the next edition of the smallest international photography festival in the world, play guitar, build guitars, wander inanely around the Internet, pick mushrooms in the Norwegian forests, and cook.
6. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
That was probably when I was at university. I had been elected editor of the college newspaper - in the absence of anyone else - and I immediately started to subvert it. In an effort to inject fresh ideas into a moribund institution I ran a syndicated article about Angela Davis, an Afro-American political activist. I was given a dressing down by a tutor and an extraordinary meeting of the students’ union was convened specifically to censure me. At which I refrained from speaking. You would have thought I had planted a bomb under King’s College.
7. What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?
I’m pretty meticulous in my research. For “A Fool’s Pilgrimage” I spent several weeks in the library of Leiden University reading mostly French texts on life and ideas in the 15th century. Without wishing to sound like a literary method actor, I did actually start to live in that era. Other work has required less research because I’m already familiar with the subject or situation, but research is always ongoing.
8. What did you edit out of this book?”
Roughly 25%, if you count from the first draft. There were things there that I loved to bits but which did not contribute much to the story beyond amusement. And I was not writing a sitcom. Sparsile encouraged me to take self-criticism to a higher level and the result was a much tighter story.