Ask the Author: Janet Dean Knight
Answered Questions (7)
Janet Dean Knight
This year I read Milkman by Anna Burns, which I found challenging but ultimately a really atmospheric absorbing read. I read Kate Atkinson's Transcription which wasn't one of my favourites of hers but interesting and skillfully done. I read Jackie Skingley's forthcoming memoir about her life as a WRAC in the 1960s which is due out in early December and is called High Heels and Beetle Crushers. Jackie is a participant from the writing courses I co-run in France, so I was pleased to read and review her book. It's a great read full of period detail and helpful for me as my next book is set in the 1960s. I've also read the first 3 books in Sophie Hannah's Culver Valley Crime series. I started Sophie's brilliant Dream Author Programme a few months ago so wanted to find out what kind of writer she is, and she's great!
Janet Dean Knight
I wait. Read. Write anything. Try poetry if I'm working on a novel, or a play. I teach writing on courses, so I have a lot of writing exercises to draw on and sometimes I use them on myself. But actually the only thing to do is write, if it's rubbish, start again, but there's usually something retreivable in everything you do.
Janet Dean Knight
Getting lost in a piece of writing and coming out of it knowing you've produced something quite good, then spending time refining it to make it something you can be proud of. Also, lovely feedback from readers!
Janet Dean Knight
Read as much as you can, write as much as you can, be brave and send your work out to be published as much as you can. I didn't establish a consistent writing practice until later in life, and I wish I had found more time to write and seen it as central to my life rather than peripheral. You have to commit time, attention and resources to establish a consistent writing practice, to learn and to share your work with others. Go on courses if you can, and to events, mix with writers, join groups, offer yourself.
Janet Dean Knight
I'm working on a sequel to The Peacemaker, with a working title of How Could I Dance? It's set in 1963 and is very different in style to my first book, although it features some of the same characters.
I'm also writing plays and hoping to put some of my poems into a collection.
I'm also writing plays and hoping to put some of my poems into a collection.
Janet Dean Knight
For fiction, I have found research inspiring. I have loved the historical research for The Peacemaker, especially the social history of the 1930s, the films, fashions, homes and jobs of people of my parents' and grandparents' era.
I also am inspired by my family and write poetry and plays as Janet Dean which draw a lot on my childhood and family relationships.
Other things that inspire me are nature, travel and art. I often write short stories and poems on holiday and after visiting museums and galleries.
I also am inspired by my family and write poetry and plays as Janet Dean which draw a lot on my childhood and family relationships.
Other things that inspire me are nature, travel and art. I often write short stories and poems on holiday and after visiting museums and galleries.
Janet Dean Knight
The idea for The Peacemaker has been with me since childhood. It started with the stories my mother used to tell me about her own mother and a man she had been married to who had died in the First World War. Many years later I researched my family history and found out some things, which I think had been kept as family secrets, which were not part of the story my mother told me. I used these secrets to write a ficitonal story based on the characters in my family.
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