Ask the Author: Karen Little
Answered Questions (6)
Karen Little
It was so weird finding myself on a Trailer Park; I couldn't find anywhere that would take dogs (I have two naughty rescue pooches) So everything about it is interesting to me. A stream at the end of my garden leads to a river and you can follow it for four miles (feels like ten) to the sea. However, I so happened to have set the final book in my trilogy, Ghosts Treading Water, which I wrote before I moved her six months ago.....where a stream at the bottom of the garden leads to a river and to the sea. Spooky. Of course that means the Trailer Park in the new book has to be somewhere entirely different........
Karen Little
It just seems to happen. I don't mean a story pops into my head. I'm not one of those people who have an idea nagging them to be written; I just find myself becoming interested in things going on around me, and places. If I sit down to write I have no trouble writing a kind of stream of consciousness. My first book was hand written and I didn't realise I was writing a book. I typed it up, which I hate doing, (though my typing speed is slightly less shameful than it was four years ago) and realised I had sixty thousand words. Structuring it was the hard part, and I slashed about twenty thousand words. Novella is the right fit for me.
Karen Little
I'm trying to get a poetry collection together, which is driving me nuts. I prefer just writing more to selecting from nearly two hundred poems and making sense of the links between them. I keep changing my mind. I'm also writing a new book which is not set in Spain and has an entirely new set of characters. After spending so much time in the skin of the last lot, it feels like walking into school on the first day. I've no idea what they will get up to, but it's certain to be something sinister. It's set in a Trailer Park, which is where I happen to live.
Karen Little
Make sure you have a rich and interesting life. Much as my characters take things further than I would, they are based on experiences I've had, including the six years I spent in Spain, the setting for my trilogy. You have to live in order to write life, and the darkest of times can be transformed into fiction, with the characters taking on a life of their own. Which is comforting in a strange way.
Karen Little
My characters do all kinds of things on my behalf, everything from arguing to an extent that would be exhausting in real life, to torrid affairs, deceptions, murder...that would get me in trouble in real life.
Karen Little
I've not been aware of having writer's block, but I don't set myself the sort of schedule that has me sit at a desk for a certain period of time each day. Sometimes I feel like scribbling with a pen and paper, sometimes typing up, sometimes editing. I write poetry as well as having a fiction book on the go, and although the two overlap they require different brains and concentration. I also draw and paint, so I do that when I feel the need. Or I'll walk on the beach with the dogs....
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