Mslexia

Why did you become a writer?

When I was three, my mother had triplets so I was packed along to infant school, and could read before I was four. Too young to move up to the primary school, I had a blissful 'reading year' when I was seven. I made miniature books for dolls, so I feel as if I’ve always read and written. One teacher came in feeling precious most Mondays. We'd write till he felt more himself – excellent practice for judging the length of a story.

How did you start?

After university I wrote my first novel (novella, really) and made an appointment with a friend's agent. In retrospect, I think she was just being businesslike, but back then she seemed horribly brusque, pretty well dismissing my book and suggesting I tried something along the lines of my friend's work. I came home mortified. (Years later, my agent said, 'Try making soup from old bones' and I turned it into a radio play.)

At the party this warm, enthusiastic woman came up, said how much she'd enjoyed the book, then asked if she could ‘act for me’. I was so naïve, I thought she was about to do some dramatic recitation.

When I moved to Edinburgh with my husband I was unemployed for a while and had a small baby. When a blizzard kept me from getting out to the library, I sat with the stove rings burning, and started my first children's novel, The Summer House Loon. I sent it to two (unsuitable) publishers. Both sent it back. I shoved it under the bed, where it stayed until I entered it for a Guardian competition for unpublished authors. It was the runner up. At the party this warm, enthusiastic woman came up, said how much she'd enjoyed the book, then asked if she could ‘act for me’. I was so naïve, I thought she was about to do some dramatic recitation. I politely agreed, and that's how I ended up with Gina Pollinger, who was my agent till she retired.

What was your darkest hour?

I have more ‘darkest threads’ than darkest hours: that gnawing feeling that the work isn’t up to scratch. Less than a quarter of the way in, I start to think it’s poorly-conceived and half-baked, my brain’s going, and I’ve lost it. But I keep endlessly rewriting, and gradually sparks of confidence grow.

How do you go about writing a novel?

The first sentence is begun with superb confidence and optimism, with an image of the finished novel, as gleaming and perfect as a fairy tale city on a hill. That feeling melts away at once, and I start the ‘great plod.' Usually some issue has set me thinking – though for children's books for the very young, it's sometimes just an amusing idea. I never make a plan. I find it pins my characters down too much. Maybe I enjoy the uncertainty.

I plough on grimly, start to finish, editing from the first page over and over. Early pages could go off to the printer while the rest is still misty and uncertain. I feel as if the book is already there, waiting to be unearthed and I’m brushing away loose stuff to find it.

Can you talk us through a typical writing day?

On a good day I’ll take a tea-tray back to bed at seven, write with a pencil till 8.30 or so – that's as much as I can manage in terms of pushing the text ahead on any one day. Then I'll type up what I've done – it's never more than 1,000 words – go back a short way and start re-editing forward for the twentieth time, hoping to catch up with myself. Unlike many authors, I welcome interruptions. No sheds down the garden for me.

I rarely work in the evenings. I’m good at knowing when my concentration’s gone - after six or seven hours on a good day. But I don’t get that many uninterrupted days because of all the travelling, talks and events, promoting foreign editions – that sort of thing. I can't work against voices or music, so crashing surf on an ipod has changed my travelling life.

Is writing a joy or a torment?

I don’t do joy, but there is such satisfaction in getting a book right, every comma in place. The part I most enjoy is that 'doing corrections,' as we called it back in school (though I hated it then).

Looking back, what would you have done differently?

I would have written under a non-gendered name. ‘Anne Fine’ sounds so soft. I'm sure it puts off male readers. And I'd have used a different name for adult novels. When adult writers have a go at writing for children, everyone thinks, 'How wonderful! A gift from above for young readers!' The other way round, it's a very different story. (Perhaps they think we're getting uppity.)

What are your three top tips for first-time novelists?

Read, read, read.

Decide what kind of author you are (or what sort of book you're writing). If it's commercial, do the research. Otherwise, take Philip Larkin's advice: Write the book you would most like to read, but nobody's bothered to write for you.

And Muriel Spark said, write a book as if no one you know will ever read it. That can free you up to be emotionally truthful. And it's emotional truth that makes novels worth reading.

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