Dear friends,
Hello and welcome back to the Shed. I know some of you know me well, but others of you don't know me at all. So my idea today is to draw on a little questionnaire that I put to all my interviewees for one of the magazines I write for, but with tweaks towards the literary as well as the musical and have a shot at answering it myself. It's not as easy as I thought...
If you could only read one author from now on, who would it be?
Shakespeare. He's got everything. Absolutely everything. I don't believe there's anything we can't learn from him.
If you could only listen to one composer from now on, who would it be?
Not fair! I think it might have to be Mozart, and I expect that sounds boring, but it isn't. Because if you're only going to listen to one composer, you need that composer to cover every human emotion there is, including humour and affection, and Mozart does this better than anybody else. (Above: the slow movement of the "Dissonance" Quartet...)
One author you'd travel long and far to meet?
I'd have loved to meet Dodie Smith, author of 'I Capture the Castle'. It's been my favourite novel for decades, its heroine famously poised, as one commentator puts it, "between childhood and adultery". And Dodie had some nice dogs, too - 'A Hundred and One Dalmatians' came into being for a good reason. I recommend Valerie Grove's beautiful biography of her.
One genre you'd love to write in that you haven't tried yet?
I'd love to write a series of murder mysteries featuring a really strong woman detective. Theoretically. My trouble with thinking up crime fiction, though, is that what we see on TV usually feels so far-fetched that while I enjoy it, I still can't quite believe in it. And I think you have to believe five hundred per cent in what you're writing if it's going to be any good. That's why I haven't tried it yet.
Any writing struggles?
There's a permanent sense of wanting to rip everything up and start over. But specifically, daft things like not noticing word repetitions until the third time through. The only solution is to read everything aloud, because then you miss nothing. And with a 90,000-word book, that's a lot that the cats have to listen to.
What would be your advice to a would-be writer trying to improve?
First, find an idea that grabs you so hard that if you don't write it, it will write you. Next, make an outline to follow - a bit like a step-ladder. Know your characters inside out and upside down and backwards. Then write in white heat. And edit in ice-blue cold. Then try to cut what you've written down by at least half.
If you weren't a writer, what would you be?
A psychotherapist, a photographer or a plumber. Something beginning with P, anyway...
One person you write for?
My mum. Without her encouragement I might never have had the bloody-mindedness to try to be a writer at all. She died in 1994 and I still miss her every day.
One kind of writing you're still not ready to try?
Poetry. I do write some, notably for the opera libretto I'm working on for Roxanna Panufnik. But I'd never, ever try to publish my poetry in its own right or dare to think I could be a poet. Even if that does begin with a P.