Ask the Author: Sharon Plant
Answered Questions (6)
Sharon Plant
Many things are inspiring. I paint, so I can be inspired by colour, landscapes, faces, light, interiors; I sing, so I can be inspired by musicians, audiences, crowds, sounds, action; I am a mother so I find the relationship between parent and child fascinating; I am a walker so wildlife and vistas feed the writing. I have always written: poems, short stories, children's stories, songs, journalism: writing, like any other craft, needs regular attention in order to improve. I use words as other people might use a camera, words form my mementoes.
Sharon Plant
Look and listen. Write constantly. Mentally recreate situations that you've seen or heard and weave them into your dialogue. Compose songs, write poems, everything enriches the prose.
Sharon Plant
Being a writer is challenging. Some days are difficult and you feel as if you've underachieved, but good days can turn on a phrase or a sentence in which you feel you've nailed the feeling in your head to the page. One of the best 'things' is the absorption, the sense that the past nine hours were only one hour because you are engrossed in conjuring an image, a physical three dimensional world in which your readers can see exactly what you are seeing. Another pleasure is the solitude: it is satisfying to move around unchallenged and unobstructed in your own head.
Sharon Plant
I paint. Landscapes, portraits, wildlife, architectural buildings, anything that grabs my attention. And when I have a painter;s block, I go back to writing.
Sharon Plant
My next book is called The Life of Riley. It was inspired by a short, handwritten autobiography written by my grandmother. When I looked at old maps of the area where she lived, I was surprised to see how much the landscape had changed in 100 years. I created the character Ray Riley and placed him in this landscape. Ray Riley runs across fields along a lane that is now the A10; he passes Weir Hall, which is now the Great Cambridge Roundabout. Lunatic asylums, lying in hospitals, workhouses, are now coffee shops and trendy galleries; a time when people rented rooms by the week has been replaced by the expectation that young people buy whole houses. In my grandmother's lifetime, the area was a mixture of fields, marshes and tenements, many of which were razed by The Blitz: I placed Ray Riley in Nichols Square, which survived the bombs only to be razed in 1962, against local protest, by Shoreditch Council. The novel describes this lost terrain, and in this world I placed an imagined dialogue, although many of the locations and events are factual.
Sharon Plant
Hello, I did English and American Literature with Art History at Warwick University. The course looked at all the great American writers and it inspired me to visit their homes to learn more about their roots and the landscape in which they wrote. I found the wilderness expanses mesmeric, the emptiness and isolation, and being drawn to the Walt Whitman sense of movement and experience I wanted to capture the idea of outsiders coming in to a small community.
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more