Ask the Author: Rachel Crowther
Answered Questions (6)
Rachel Crowther
The best advice is to go for it! There's no point thinking about writing or wishing you could be a writer: writers are just people who write, and if you want to do it, then find yourself a bit of time and make a start. Some people find creative writing courses helpful, and there are plenty of them around: regular evening classes and residential weeks in exotic places, online courses and resources galore, one-off workshops and one-to-one mentoring - it should be possible to find something to suit you. The Arvon Foundation and Faber Academy are good places to start. Other people join writing groups (in person or online) and share their work that way. And others prefer to write on their own, not showing anyone what they've written until it's perfect. Some people like the challenge of entering competitions or submitting stories or poems to magazines, others would hate that and are perfectly happy writing for their own pleasure. There's no right way to go about it, and for lots of people finding the time to write is the biggest hurdle. So write on the bus, skip the gym, spend your lunch break scribbling... there's always a way!
Rachel Crowther
My next novel is due out in summer 2017, and I've been busy editing it for the last few months. I've also started two more novels, both quite different, which I'm looking forward to getting back to soon. I'm not quite sure yet which of them I'll turn to first. I like having several different projects on the go, at different stages, so there's always something to work on.
Rachel Crowther
Writing isn't all a question of inspiration. It's a question of motivation, commitment and hard slog too, as any writer will tell you. But I think there are two kinds of inspiration that do play a part: one is the way ideas drift into your head and settle, and you think, 'wow, that's an interesting idea for a story / character / situation / dilemma' - and the other is the itch of really needing to get down to writing (or editing, or whatever stage you're at) when you've been away from it, which I can only describe as being similar to the sudden yearning for chocolate - almost impossible to resist, and essential for the forwards momentum of whatever you're working on.
The first kind, by its nature, tends to come when you're least expecting it. It might be in the middle of a concert or out on a walk, overhearing a conversation or reading an article, seeing someone across the street or musing on nothing in particular on a train or car journey - anything that sparks a connection or catches your imagination. I think the only prerequisite is that you have to be open to that spark, and ready to see where it might take you.
The second kind is harder to explain, but anyone who writes will recognise it. Less inspiration, perhaps, than a craving - to create, to express, to follow a thread, to improve something that's already a work in progress. Maybe that's what you might call a vocation: not something you can call up to order, but a necessary (or at least hugely useful) prerequisite for a writer: to want to write.
The first kind, by its nature, tends to come when you're least expecting it. It might be in the middle of a concert or out on a walk, overhearing a conversation or reading an article, seeing someone across the street or musing on nothing in particular on a train or car journey - anything that sparks a connection or catches your imagination. I think the only prerequisite is that you have to be open to that spark, and ready to see where it might take you.
The second kind is harder to explain, but anyone who writes will recognise it. Less inspiration, perhaps, than a craving - to create, to express, to follow a thread, to improve something that's already a work in progress. Maybe that's what you might call a vocation: not something you can call up to order, but a necessary (or at least hugely useful) prerequisite for a writer: to want to write.
Rachel Crowther
Back in the days when I had very little time to write, I used to scoff at writer’s block. I remember being in a workshop once with someone who was finding it hard to decide whether he’d write better if he’d already been to the gym that day, or whether having the gym as a reward to look forward to would make his writing time more productive. I was incredulous: you mean, you’re choosing to spend time in the gym when you could be writing? You’ve got time to write and you’re not getting on with it as fast as your typing fingers can carry you? Me, I have to make the most of every minute I have! I don’t have time for luxuries like writer’s block!
But as I began to have a little more time for writing, I began to understand. If you’ve got all day every day to write (and that’s still not me, I fear) you’re not going to be actually writing every minute of every day. You need thinking time, planning time, digesting time – even panicking, despairing time. If you spend most of the week waiting for the glorious empty hours you’ve carved out to write, you’re more likely to hit the ground running, but even then you may not be able to pick up the thread at once. If you’ve had to break off to edit something else, or to deal with a crisis of some kind, you might find it difficult to immerse yourself in whatever you’re writing again – and sometimes, in the middle of a long project, the whole thing just feels stale and flat and worthless, and you just can’t see the point.
So I think there are several different kinds of writer’s block, and they have different remedies. If you’ve lost your place, going back to the beginning and reading through from page one again often helps you to work your way back into it. If you’ve written yourself to a standstill, maybe that’s the time for a dog walk (or even, if you’re so minded, the gym). If you’re in the doldrums, writing something else might help – or even leaving the place where you’re stuck and leaping on to another point in the book, an episode you’re more excited about. But in the end, I take a pretty brisk tone with myself: if you’re serious about writing, then write. Write anything – get some words down – and it’ll help you move forwards.
But as I began to have a little more time for writing, I began to understand. If you’ve got all day every day to write (and that’s still not me, I fear) you’re not going to be actually writing every minute of every day. You need thinking time, planning time, digesting time – even panicking, despairing time. If you spend most of the week waiting for the glorious empty hours you’ve carved out to write, you’re more likely to hit the ground running, but even then you may not be able to pick up the thread at once. If you’ve had to break off to edit something else, or to deal with a crisis of some kind, you might find it difficult to immerse yourself in whatever you’re writing again – and sometimes, in the middle of a long project, the whole thing just feels stale and flat and worthless, and you just can’t see the point.
So I think there are several different kinds of writer’s block, and they have different remedies. If you’ve lost your place, going back to the beginning and reading through from page one again often helps you to work your way back into it. If you’ve written yourself to a standstill, maybe that’s the time for a dog walk (or even, if you’re so minded, the gym). If you’re in the doldrums, writing something else might help – or even leaving the place where you’re stuck and leaping on to another point in the book, an episode you’re more excited about. But in the end, I take a pretty brisk tone with myself: if you’re serious about writing, then write. Write anything – get some words down – and it’ll help you move forwards.
Rachel Crowther
The best thing about being a writer – with apologies for what might seem an unhelpful answer! – is writing. For me, there’s nothing to beat the pleasure it brings. And that goes for every part of the process: the excitement of the first tingling of an idea, the initial drafting that spills it all out on paper (or screen), the endless revising and editing that turns it into something worth reading.
It’s hard to explain to a non-initiate how thrilling each of those elements is – imagining something, sketching it out, then knocking it into shape. It’s hard to explain, too, what you’re doing it for. It’s certainly not the satisfaction of sitting back admiring the finished product – however much I’ve loved writing something, and however proud I am of it, I’m itching to get on with the next project as soon as it’s finished, or even before. (I’m not one of those orderly writers who has a decent gap between novels: rather like children, I always have at least two or three on the go, at different stages of development.)
Nor is there one particular stage that makes the rest worthwhile: in fact, each of them have their frustrations as well as their pleasures. When the idea is germinating, there’s the anxiety that you’ll lose sight of the spark that first appealed to you, or that you won’t be able to see it through into anything remotely resembling a novel. When you’re drafting, there’s a sinking feeling that the writing isn’t good enough, or isn’t going in the right direction. And when you’re editing, there’s a niggling sense that what you’re doing isn’t really at all creative, and that anything that takes this much chopping and reshaping is never going to have any sparkle. But somehow the whole process is utterly compelling and irresistible, and I can’t imagine living without it.
It’s hard to explain to a non-initiate how thrilling each of those elements is – imagining something, sketching it out, then knocking it into shape. It’s hard to explain, too, what you’re doing it for. It’s certainly not the satisfaction of sitting back admiring the finished product – however much I’ve loved writing something, and however proud I am of it, I’m itching to get on with the next project as soon as it’s finished, or even before. (I’m not one of those orderly writers who has a decent gap between novels: rather like children, I always have at least two or three on the go, at different stages of development.)
Nor is there one particular stage that makes the rest worthwhile: in fact, each of them have their frustrations as well as their pleasures. When the idea is germinating, there’s the anxiety that you’ll lose sight of the spark that first appealed to you, or that you won’t be able to see it through into anything remotely resembling a novel. When you’re drafting, there’s a sinking feeling that the writing isn’t good enough, or isn’t going in the right direction. And when you’re editing, there’s a niggling sense that what you’re doing isn’t really at all creative, and that anything that takes this much chopping and reshaping is never going to have any sparkle. But somehow the whole process is utterly compelling and irresistible, and I can’t imagine living without it.
Rachel Crowther
How women juggle work, families, relationships and in some cases other important things (like writing!) has always been an interesting topic for me – in fact, it’s more or less the central preoccupation of my life, both in theory and in practice.
For me, writing about the choices and compromises women make is part of the way I try to make sense of life, and although most of my friends are still very much in the thick of looking after children and/or ageing parents while managing demanding jobs, and in some cases challenging marriages, I’d been thinking for some time about what highly successful and overstretched women might do when they retired.
That was the starting point for the novel, really. That and the related question about mothers and daughters and how their relationships change as the daughters grow up and start to face some of the same challenges as their mothers. I wanted all along to make this a multi-generational novel, in which we see things – such as Flora and Henry’s marriage, and Lou and Kitty’s childhoods – from both perspectives.
For me, writing about the choices and compromises women make is part of the way I try to make sense of life, and although most of my friends are still very much in the thick of looking after children and/or ageing parents while managing demanding jobs, and in some cases challenging marriages, I’d been thinking for some time about what highly successful and overstretched women might do when they retired.
That was the starting point for the novel, really. That and the related question about mothers and daughters and how their relationships change as the daughters grow up and start to face some of the same challenges as their mothers. I wanted all along to make this a multi-generational novel, in which we see things – such as Flora and Henry’s marriage, and Lou and Kitty’s childhoods – from both perspectives.
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