On Writing

This page is about the writing process, the writing life, creativity. I’ll include articles, speeches, interviews etc. I’ll keep adding new material.

This is what’s here so far:

1. SPEECH FOR THE NONINO INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2022

2. THE IMPERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL PROCESS OF CREATING A BOOK.

3. VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL ROSEN.

4. SPEECH FOR THE JAMES KRUSS PRIZE.

5. A ROOM OF MY OWN

6. KIRKUS REVIEWS INTERVIEW: IN PRAISE OF IMPERFECTION

*****

1. SPEECH FOR NONINO INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2022

What a profound honour this is. Thank you to the jury, and to the Nonino family. Particular thanks to Mariagrazia and all at the great Salani Editore, to my other wonderful Italian publishers, Orecchio Acerbo, and to my translators.  Thank you to all my publishers, including those tiny crazy ones who printed my very first stories for a handful of readers, years ago, and to all my readers everywhere. And to my family, especially to my wife, Julia and my daughter, Freya, who are constant sources of inspiration and support. Beautiful Italy has been very good to me these last few years. Thank you to my readers here, and to the brilliant Italian children I meet who, of all the children in the world, seem to ask the most astonishing, perceptive questions about my work.

And thank you for choosing a writer for the young. This award recognises the importance of such work. It honours our young citizens. It honours all of us around the world – writers, artists, publishers, teachers, librarians – who work with and for the young

I never expected to write for children. I thought, I’m an educated grown up adult, and so I should write for educated grown up adults. Which what I did, or tried to do, for several years. Then I was ambushed by a story called Skellig. As soon as I began to wite it down I knew that it was the best thing I had ever done, that it was the culmination of all that had gone before, and I realised, to my amazement, that it was a book mainly for children. I felt a rush of new strength and liberation. As I continued to write I felt a new emotional boldness, artistic freedom. I had come home. I began to be the writer I was meant to be.

I haven’t looked back. I’ve been free to explore the many ways of telling stories, to collaborate with leading artists, musicians, theatre directors, actors. My work is based in my corner of England, the northeast, the little lovely damaged town of Felling, the great beaches of Northumberland. Far from the metropolis, the north east is a place of borders and wilderness, of folk song and ancient industry. A place whose language has a distinctive sound and rhythm. The place has often been dismissed as being uncultured, its language has been said to be coarse. I have written about this beautiful place, in this beautiful language, and my work has been published and performed all across the world.

Until I wrote Skellig, I had little knowledge of the world of children’s books. Like my North East of England, it is a place that many attempt to marginalise, to dismiss, to patronise. But this is a place of creativity and experimentation. It is populated by people who really do believe that art & books can help to bring about a better world, and who commit themselves to helping that dream come true. Don’t believe the cynical claptrap that children don’t read any more, that they are not interested in stories. They are powerful, responsive readers. They read with their bodies and their souls, not just with their brains. They are natural artists. Growing up is itself an artistic process. Every child turns sound into speech and song. Every child turns movement to dance. Every child makes the marks of art.

Stories for children lie at the very heart of our culture. If we could listen to the world at dusk, what would we hear beneath everything? Tender adult voices, all across the world, speaking and singing and whispering in every language, telling tales to their children. Listen. Once upon a time there was… Let me tell you when… And the children listen, and sigh, and laugh, and grow. They recognise the storytelling rhythms, the physical movements, even before they understand the words themselves. These things have been passed down through time, ever since we sang stories to each other in the ancient cave. They are in our blood and bones and breath. Stories shrink time, draw the generations together, they keep the past alive, they sing us into the future.

Ted Hughes said that every new child is nature’s chance to correct culture’s error. Goodness knows there are enough such errors around in the world today. It is a world that we adults can become tired of. We can become cynical and jaded. We forget to look upon the world’s wonders and to be astonished by its mysteries. But for every new child, this world is brand new. Every child offers us the chance to look again, to see again. Each child offers the possibility of growth and change.

The act of writing is itself childlike. It occupies the body as well as the brain. It’s a physical act. The writer for the young can’t be involved in simple display. There’s no room for boastfulness or cynicism, for simple messages or spurious instructions. The writer seeks to entertain, to give pleasure, as all writers do, to touch the readers mind, heart, soul. The writer seeks to make the imagination fly and dance.  The writer doesn’t say, Look how clever and accomplished I am. The writer suggests to the reader, Look how wonderful you are. Yes, you could do such things, too.

Some time back, I was asked the direct question: What is the purpose of your work? I shrugged. I started to talk about the artistic adventure, the quest, the beauty of the writing act. But I stopped. This wasn’t the whole truth. My purpose, I realised, is to liberate. To help children to become truly themselves, to have a sense of wonder at their own humanity, their own possibility. Is to help children transcend the narrow visions they are often offered by some of our so-called leaders, to become free of outmoded ways of thinking and behaving, to free them of the dull destroyers who surround us all. Dull destroyers who might appear to be grown up, but who have left the child behind. They have no child within themselves, or if they do, it is a secret hidden thing that weeps in the darkest corner of the soul.

Cassiodorus said, when talking of the creators of medieval manuscripts, that every word written is a wound on Satan’s body. I don’t believe in Satan, but there are forces and people which seek to control, to regiment, to confine the child. Every word written, every story, especially words written for the young, is an act of hope and optimism, a move against those forces of destruction. We must keep on writing and singing and whispering the words, keep the ancient brand new tales alive. We must sustain hope and optimism in an often dreadful world. We must be inspired by our children. Like them we must be small and brave, we must grow in beauty and strength. We must help to keep this world alive.

*****

2. THE IMPERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL PROCESS OF CREATING A BOOK

I knew, when I was young, that I wanted to write. I loved stories. I loved books. I’d go to our local library and dream that my books would stand on its shelves one day. But how could that be possible? The things that I loved were so intimidating. Their apparent perfection scared me stiff: all those words in perfect order, all those neat lines of print, those perfectly-printed pages. My work looked nothing like that. My messy mind looked nothing like that. How could anyone create such a thing? Maybe writers had special kinds of minds. Maybe the insides of writers’ minds looked like the insides of their books.

But of course, for we human beings, there’s no such thing as perfection. We’re imperfect beings in an imperfect world and our imperfection is at the heart of creativity. Our minds are messy, crowded with memories, images, sensations, fleeting thoughts, fragments of tales and dreams, weird speculations, devils and angels, hopes and fears. Much of the mind blazes with light. Much of it is vague and shadowy. Much of it is pitch-black and unknown. The mind is fragile, like the body is, but it is also one of the most powerful things in the known universe. The mind creates our world, our civilisation. And each of us has one of these astonishing, imperfect, beautiful things.

NOTEBOOK, COUNTING STARS

For me, the creative process has to be imperfect, messy, playful, often childlike, often weird. I can’t plot or to plan too closely. When I start a new story, I usually have a few notions or images. Sometimes I have a powerful central idea, a character who demands attention, a scene that cries out to be created on the page. But even then, I’m often not quite sure what I’m doing or why I’m doing it. I set off like an explorer, in the hope that I might discover a story that’s powerful and new.

I use notebooks, sketchbooks, pens, pencils, coloured pencils. I scribble and doodle, experiment and play. I allow words and images to flow from my hand onto the page and I’m often amazed by what appears there. I love my computer, too. At the same time as scribbling, I start to compose sentences, paragraphs, pages. I create a title page with the name of the book (even though I know the title will probably change) and the name of the author (me!). I establish a daily routine and keep a tally of the number of words I write. I print out the pages and hold them together with bulldog clips so that I can see the pages growing and accumulating. I try not to force the story to take a particular shape. I let it grow like an organic thing. I search for the tone of the story, the voice in which it has to be told. I keep on scribbling and composing. I write and rewrite. I throw away and throw away. I read the story aloud to myself to test its rhythm and flow.

Often I’m filled with anxiety and self-doubt: everything I write is stupid; why did I ever start this terrible book; why aren’t I writing another book? Why did I ever think of becoming a writer at all? At times like that, I just have to grit my teeth and carry on, even though I’m sure I’m writing rubbish. I try to relax. I play with my notebooks and pencils and allow new possibilities to emerge on the page. Sometimes there are moments when I suddenly see what’s going on and how I can move the story forward. There are marvellous moments of grace when I, the writer, disappear and the words flow like the notes of a song and the story seems to write itself.

NOTEBOOK, BONE MUSIC

 

NOTEBOOK, THE TIGHTROPE WALKERS

I start to get a sense of the overall shape and I see what kind of book this might be. I begin to understand some of the connections that hold it all together. I cut and reshape. I get rid of characters who once seemed essential but who now get in the way. Sometimes I change the tense in which the book is written. I change from third person to first and back to third again. I slash and burn. I keep on writing, scribbling, rewriting, rewriting. I get the glimmerings of an ending but I don’t rush towards it. I let the story continue to flow and to grow. I take great pains to try to make every word earn its place. I try to create a book, even when it is tinged with darkness and danger, that is a thing of beauty. I try to reach out to my unknown readers, to somehow cast a spell over them, to draw them into the story’s fold.

In the end, there it is, that apparently impossible thing: a beautifully-bound book; words that appear to be in perfect order; neat lines of print; perfectly-organised pages. It looks fixed, static. It looks as if it couldn’t exist in any other way. That’s an illusion. The story continues to move and grow and to take on new dimensions in the minds of its readers, It is recreated there, and stimulates new tales, new memories, new dreams. It has my name on the cover, which might suggest that I know everything about it, but I don’t. The book has its own life now, and I’m in the process of trying to create another.

The making of a book involves hard work, playfulness, dreaming, willpower and madness. Sometimes I’ve written a short book in a few weeks. A novel will take a year or more. The whole process can be excruciating and exhausting, but it’s also a thing of great beauty. To create and to pass on a story is a fundamental, human act. We’ve been sharing stories with each other since the beginning of human time. We’ll be sharing them until the end.

*****

3. AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL ROSEN

 

*****

4. JAMES KRUSS PRIZE SPEECH

I gave this speech on receiving the James Kruss Prize in the International Youth Library at Blutenburg Castle, Munich, 8th September 2022. The prize was awarded to myself and to my wonderful translator, Alexandra Ernst.

‘Established in 2013, the James Krüss Prize for International Children’s and Young Adult Literature is awarded biennially to an
author for his/her outstanding literary work for children or young adults. In commemoration of German author James Krüss, the prize promotes storytelling and cosmopolitanism. In order to be awarded, a literary work needs to display extraordinary qualities such as linguistic brilliance, originality, imaginative storytelling, a variety of forms, and humanism.’

 

We come into the world out of the dark. We don’t know where we come from. We don’t know where we’re going. But  here we come and here we are. We begin as the tiniest of dots. A dot so small it can’t be seen. A dot that flourishes and grows and takes shape within the mother’s dark. And then out we come into the light. And the first sound is a cry, of greeting, of shock. A proclamation. Here I am!

A child is born. And this brand new child opens its eyes and sees. And as the child is born, the world again is brand new, the world itself is born again. And as the child grows that first cry is cried again, and the cries seem formless – meaningless gurgles and gasps and howls. But the cries are shaped and shaped again. They become bursts of song, they hold rhythms and beats and modulations.

And the child creates the very first words: Mama Papa.

And the very first sentences: Dinna Papa!  Higher Mama!

And the child finds delight and astonishment in the sounds it makes.

So language and song begin with the first formless cry.

And the child crawls and rises and falls and then at last can stand erect and then the child walks and it finds delight and astonishment in how it moves.

Dance begins with a totter and a struggle and a tumble and a crawl.

And the child makes marks – hand prints, crayon scrawls, paint splashes, and the first pictures start to come, and the child finds delight and astonishment in the shapes it makes.

Art begins with daubs, with mess, with scrawls.

All begins with joyous mess and imperfection, with experiment and play.

All children are natural artists.

All children are grammatical geniuses.

In the child, body, mind, heart and soul are one.

And the child grows into its home, this lovely world. It explores the possibilities of itself and the possibilities of the world.

And in the drama, song and dance of growing up, the child moves forward, but the child also leads us back, to the first of all stories. Stories that we shared in the ancient cave. Stories that like young children, we danced, yelled, recited, sang.

And the child is loved and helped and guided by parents, siblings, teachers, friends, neighbours, but the new born child is at the heart of this new born world. Children, too often marginalised, overlooked, seen as things to instruct, as objects that will become economic units, as things that must hurry to grow up, grow up – they are at the heart of our civilisation. They are true citizens of our world. They are creators and teachers. Ted Hughes said that every new child is nature’s chance to correct culture’s error. Every new child can help us to see this troubled gorgeous world again, to see our errors, to see how we must change.

I never thought I would write for the young. I thought, I’m an intelligent grown up educated adult, so I should write for intelligent educated grown up adults. Which is what I did, or tried to do, for many years. Then I found myself writing a series of stories, Counting Stars, which grew from my own childhood, and which were all told from the point of view of a child. When I’d finished them, I gathered them up, put them into a big envelope, addressed them to my long-suffering agent, and slid the envelope into a postbox. I was pretty pleased with these stories. I thought I’d give myself some time off.  I turned away from the postbox. I’d only taken a few steps when a new tale started telling itself in my mind. I found him in the garage on a Sunday afternoon. I didn’t take time off. I went back to the desk and began to accept and to write down this tale that demanded to be told. I got half way down the first page when I knew that it was the best thing I’d ever written, that it was the culmination of everything I’d written before – and I realised to my astonishment that it was a story mainly for the young. I felt a burst of excitement, of artistic strength and liberation.

The book turned out to be called Skellig. It almost wrote itself. It presented itself to me, line by line, scene by scene. I never knew exactly where it was going, what would happen next, how it would end. Writing this book confirmed for me that art is not just controlled by the artist but that the artist might be controlled by the art.

Yes, stories are created things, shaped by a guiding hand and mind, but they’re also spontaneous things. They arrive like new born children. The story in its beginnings is a messy imperfect mysterious thing. Where on earth has it come from? What on earth might it become? Writing itself is childlike. The finished published book appears to be perfect. Look at it, all those neatly bound pages, those orderly lines of print. But where does it come from? From this imperfect human mind. From this this imperfect body. Just from there? Or does it come from something else as well, somewhere else? From the outer darkness? From some other dimension? From the ancient cave? It often feels like that. It feels like it has always existed. It arrives in the mind like a child into the world. Skellig came in one long almost-uncluttered breath. Other stories begin in notebooks, big artist’s sketchbooks, each page a landscape, a field of possibility. The story appears on the notebook page like a weird message from beyond. It comes into the light, onto a notebook page. A messy imperfect thing, it doodles and scrawls and experiments with possibilities and shapes, it grunts and groans and sometimes at the best of times it bursts into lovely song. The writer helps the tale to grow, uses intelligence, stamina, wisdom, skill to help shape and reshape the story, to help it become the best story it is possible to be. Writing is not just to do with the brain. Writing is a physical act. Writing is an act of love. At the best of times it is as if the writer is not there at all – those moments of grace when the writer disappears into the tale, into the beauty of language and song and form. And like a child the story begins to achieve independence. It takes its first steps into the world. The writer waves it off. Farewell story. Be brave. Off you go to the editor. Off you go to the publisher. And in the end the book comes out. How lovely you are. Thank you for growing up. And yes, you look perfect, but of course nobody knows the weird process that brought you here. No matter. You’re strong enough to be in the world on your own. Farewell. Be happy. Oh, there’s another story stirring now. Time to help bring that one to life.

I knew little about the children’s book world before I wrote Skellig. I quickly and delightedly learned. Here were people who really did believe that books and art might bring about change in the world, and who worked to help make that happen. I came to know the extraordinary work of children’s authors, artists, publishers, teachers, librarians, booksellers. I discovered an artistic freedom in a world of creativity and experimentation, where books might be all pictures, where books can flash, where tiny colourful books can explore the most profound of human issues. And I discovered young readers, readers who read with the body and soul as well as the mind, who accept and love all forms of storytelling.

For children, stories don’t just sit still as things to be admired and praised. They move and dance in the imagination, take on new forms. Stories are things that can be danced, sung, chanted, dramatised. I became a playwright after reading the opening of Skellig to a class of eight year olds in a Newcastle primary school. When I’d finished and the bell for break rang, two boys ran to me, filled with excitement. ‘That was brilliant, David,’ they said. ‘We’re going into the yard now to act it out. He’s Michael! I’m Skellig!’ And out they ran. So the first adaptation of any of my books, fired by the artistic playfulness and courage of two boys, took place in a Newcastle school yard. A year or so later, Trevor Nunn approached me and asked if I’d be interested in writing a stage version of Skellig for the Young Vic. I took a deep breath, I thought of those boys, I thought if they could do it then surely so could I, and I found myself saying, Yes, of course I would.

In writing for the young I’ve been released, I’ve recreated myself, I have become much bolder. I write in many forms. I collaborate with artists, actors, directors, composers, musicians. And of course I collaborate with my readers, with their imaginations, with their openness. How wonderful it is to write for an audience which is in a constant process of change and flux, to write for readers who know they don’t know everything yet, who are engaged in the beautiful, troubled, hilarious, yearning drama of growing up. Readers who are moving forward, exploring all kinds of possibilities, who ask the ageless questions. Who am I? What is this weird world? Where did I come from and what might I become?

Some time back, I was asked the direct question: What is the purpose of your work? I shrugged. I started to talk about the artistic adventure, the quest, the beauty of the writing act. But I stopped. This wasn’t the whole truth. My purpose, I realised, is to liberate. To help children to become truly themselves, to have a sense of wonder at their own humanity, their own possibility. Is to help children transcend the narrow visions they are often offered by some of our so-called leaders, to become free of outmoded ways of thinking and behaving, to free them of the dull destroyers who surround us all. Dull destroyers who might appear to be grown up, but who have left the child behind. They have no child within themselves, or if they do, it is a secret hidden thing that weeps in the darkest corner of the soul.

Cassiodorus said, when talking of the creators of medieval manuscripts, that every word written is a wound on Satan’s body. I don’t believe in Satan, but there are forces and people which seek to control, to regiment, to confine the child. Every word written, every story, especially words written for the young, is an act of hope and optimism, a move against those forces of destruction. We must keep on writing and singing and whispering the words, keep the ancient brand new tales alive. We must sustain hope and optimism in an often dreadful world. We must be inspired by our children. Like them we must be small and brave, we must grow in beauty and strength. We must help this world to be born again. We must help to keep this world alive.

© David Almond

*****

5. A ROOM OF  MY OWN

This essay about my writing life and my supposed childhood ‘disadvantages,’ was published in ‘A Room of my Own Anthology’. Royal Society of Literature. Essays by Val McDermid, David Almond, Bernadine Evaristo, Eley Williams, Daljit Nagra, Howard Jacobson, Nadofa Mohamed.

*

Disadvantaged? It never crossed my mind until a journalist told me that I must have been. I’d overcome so many obstacles, she said. Obstacles? Don’t all writers have much to overcome? Self-doubt, the blank page, rejection. Obstacles come with the territory. They exist out in the world. They exist inside the self. But here’s what she saw, I guess, as disadvantages.

I was a Catholic kid from far-flung Tyneside. My first home was a nineteenth-century half-dilapidated mice-infested upstairs flat. The bath hung from a nail on the kitchen wall. The toilet was in the outside yard down a steep set of unlit stairs. I was three when the flat was demolished. We moved to a pebbledash council estate, where we lived till I was thirteen. My primary school was a gloomy stone place down by the Tyne, close by the stench of a boneyard and the endless shipyard din. My baby sister died when I was seven. My dad died when I was fifteen. He left five children behind, three of them much younger than I. My mother was severely disabled by rheumatoid arthritis. She couldn’t work. She’d need two new hips before the age of forty. There was little money. The education of both parents had been curtailed by war. None of my family had ever been to university….

Disadvantaged? Me? No.

*

My world was rich, strange, multi-faceted. It nourished the imagination. It gave me love and care, tragedy and joy. I never thought of what I didn’t have. I envied no one. My dad worked in the offices of an engineering firm. He had a profound belief in the power of education. My mam told us to do the things she couldn’t do – to run, to dance. In my family were printers, bookies, carpet fitters, welders, labourers, firemen. There were feuds and love affairs in the streets around us. A flaxen-haired tramp lived in the fields at the top of the town. Escapologists and quack doctors and mesmerists terrified and charmed us in Newcastle’s markets. I walked through the ringing of river bells and the wailing of factory sirens. The bones of children killed in the Felling Pit Disaster lay deep beneath us. Skylarks and buzzards soared high above. We lit bonfires and played split the kipper and slept beneath fishing boats on Northumbrian beaches. I took part as an altar boy in the weird ritual of the Catholic Mass. I dreamed of Hell and Heaven. We all lived with the dread of nuclear war. From the top of town, through a sunlit haze, we saw the distant Cheviots, the pitheads of the Durham moors, the dark North Sea. Our new council estates came with parks, playing fields, community centres, and libraries. They were populated by families of all kinds, all incomes. We never felt that we were diminished by living in such a place. We felt respected and honoured, part of a welcoming and optimistic wider world. Young writers, just like all young people, need that honour and respect. They need secure housing. They need libraries. They need schools which are properly funded. Private schools need to lose their charitable status and to be closed down. Why should the children of those on universal credit subsidise the children of the rich?

*

All childhoods, all lives, are ‘ordinary’, but when looked at through the writer’s eyes, they can become rich and strange and filled with creative possibilities. Yes, demand your rights and work for change. But don’t waste time on envy, on desiring another’s life. See the magic and trouble and drama in your own. Turn supposed disadvantages into privileges. Write them. When I was a boy, when I dared to say I wanted to be a writer, some folk frowned and said, ‘But son, you’re just you, a kid from Tyneside, and what the Hell will you write about?” I write about Tyneside, and my books are read all around the world.

*

If I’d thought much about it. the literary world of published authors and poets could have seemed very distant and intimidating. But it hardly crossed my mind. I read and wrote and hoped. I knew that my writing might be nonsense and could all well come to nowt. But I dreamed high, as every writer must. To be as good as Shakespeare. Why not? The literary world existed for me as a boy in our little local library: a clean well-lighted place just downhill from where I lived, just next to where I played football with my friends. In there I roamed and explored. That’s where I found Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, William Blake. That’s where I dreamed of seeing my seeing my own books on the shelves one day.

*

I read English and American Literature at UEA, where it was assumed that the act of reading and creative writing went hand-in-hand. How understand what a poet was up to until you’d tried to write poetry yourself? I read and read. I wrote and wrote. I discovered little magazines and small presses. There were dozens of them, several coming from places close by my first home. My stories appeared in such magazine, in Iron, in Kudos, in long-forgotten publications with a handful of readers. The first story I was ever paid for brought me £3. When, to my delight, I was published in Bananas, I received £20. I didn’t care about the cash or lack of it. There I was in print. Once or twice I even met a stranger who’d seen and admired my work. I was published, but I held back from naming myself as a ‘writer’. I knew that becoming a true writer might involve a long and often lonely journey.

*

If you wish to write, and to sustain a life of writing, you must look after yourself. I became a primary school teacher. Short hours, I thought. Long holidays. How wrong I was. To my amazement, I loved the job, loved working with young people. And it kept me grounded, kept me close to ‘ordinary’ lives. Many of my writer friends kept clear of regular work. I saw them chasing after little grants. I saw how some of them inflated their egos or compromised their work in an effort to impress the literary gatekeepers or the givers of grants. That was not for me, and financial anxiety and the dread of poverty were not for me, either. For two years, exhausted, I wrote hardly a word, but then regained my energy. I sought an agent, was turned down by one who said she already had a couple of authors with Northern working-class voices and so she had no need of me. I sold my house, bought time out from teaching, and lived in a commune for a year. I wrote and wrote. I took five years to write a novel. It brought me my first agent, the angelic Maggie Noach. She and I sent it to every UK publisher. Every UK publisher rejected it. I cursed, snarled, spat and carried on. You must be stupid, said some. Yes, I agreed, probably I am. But all writers need the courage to feel stupid. By now I was teaching again, part-time, three days a week. Perfect. I had money and I had time. The next novel I finished was Skellig. It was taken by the first publisher that saw it, has been translated into over 40 languages, and has become a radio play, a stage play, a film and an opera.

*

A grant at the right time and for the right purpose is a marvellous thing. I was given a grant by Northern Arts to go on an Arvon course before I was published at all. There, one of the tutors, the novelist Rosalind Belbin, pointed to my words and murmured, ‘Yes, you can do this, David.” Those simple words would echo down the years. The best grants have been those that sent me somewhere to write. Another Northern Arts grant took me away from teaching to a month’s stay at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. There, I wrote much of a never-to-be-published novel. Another took me to a solitary winter retreat in bitterly cold Isel Hall in Cumbria where I wrote three short stories (all to appear eventually in my collection, Counting Stars) in ten days. Years after that, I was given a Hawthornden Fellowship that took me to a Scottish castle for a month, where I wrote 10,000 words of a novel, Kit’s Wilderness. These words gained me an Arts Council Bursary. With this, I bought myself three months away from teaching, during which time I finished that novel. Soon after I finished Kit’s Wilderness, Skellig came out. And soon after that, I left paid employment, and became a full-time writer.

*

I was 47 when Skellig came out. People said that at last I’d ‘made it’. It didn’t really feel like that to me. I’d been ‘making it’ all those years. I’d always written for the love of it, because I was driven to it, because I couldn’t imagine not doing it. I shaped my life around this work. All through those years, I had readers – no matter how few – who loved my words. I taught on Arvon courses. I edited a literary magazine, Panurge. I read to little audiences. I visited schools to talk about writing and to encourage and inspire young writers. I wrote stories and novels and poems and some of them were never published and never will be published, and about that I really didn’t care. To be a writer, to create and to pass on stories, is an elemental, fundamental, very human thing. We’ve been doing it since the start of human time and we’ll be doing it till the end. Every human being, no matter where they are from, or what their life conditions might be, is welcome to take part. Get a pen. Get a notebook. Just write.

 

*****