This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
We recently reviewed Wendy Perriam's latest book Broken Places and were delighted when Wendy agreed to answer a few questions for our Novelicious Readers.
Can you tell us a little about your average writing day?
I always start early in the morning and postpone household chores, emails and phone calls till later in the day. It’s all too easy to waste vital energy on such trivial distractions! But, first, I make a cup of coffee in my special “writer’s mug” – a Peter Rabbit one I’ve had since babyhood. Perhaps all those busy bunnies, racing round the rim, provide me with a good example of enterprise and exertion!
I prefer to write by hand. But once I’ve done my writing-stint, I do – reluctantly – go to the computer and turn my messily scrawled pages into a neat typescript. Then I spend the afternoon revising this typed draft, continually retyping and re-revising, until my mind is soggy and I realize it’s time to call a halt. At that stage, I turn my attention to emails and household tasks, although making the beds at 5 p.m. seems appallingly sluttish and I hear my long-dead mother’s voice in my head: “Any decent housewife does the chores first thing!”
In the evenings, I edit my students’ scripts and write my daily diary, and then, at last, it’s time for reading. Becoming totally absorbed in another author’s novel is the best part of my day!
When you are writing, do you use any celebrities or people you know as inspiration
Definitely not. As far as celebrities are concerned, I’m so clueless about current movers and shakers, I probably wouldn’t recognize Lady Gaga if she walked into my flat! And, as for using people I know, that can be hazardous. Two of my fellow authors, once extremely close, now no longer speak to each other because one depicted the other in a novel – surely a dire warning to all novelists. Anyway, the role of the fiction-writer is to invent characters, in contrast to the biographer – although even biographers run the risk of ructions and libel-cases.
The most I might do is “steal” certain aspects of someone I know and use them for a character who’s totally unlike them in every other way. For example, Charles, in my novel, Cuckoo, has my father’s love of order and efficiency, but his job, background and general demeanour are a far cry from my Dad’s. And for my novel, Michael Michael, my friend Mary Edwardes allowed me to use her own experience of being married to a Michael Edwardes, whilst also knowing two other, unrelated Michael Edwardes. I also drew on her work as a psychotherapist, but the character I eventually created was nothing like Mary in outlook and personality.
What is your favourite Women’s Fiction book of all time, and why?
My favourite novel of all time, Anna Karenina, is the story of an adulterous woman forced to choose between her tempestuous love for a handsome young officer, and her deep devotion to her child. Although such a plot is familiar in fiction, Tolstoy imbues it with such drama and passion, the reader is gripped from the start. And, as well as the lovers’ story, we’re given a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. I’ve read the book at different stages of my life – once as a teenager, once as a young mother myself, and once in older age – and each time I saw new things in it and gained a deeper understanding of the characters.
What is your writing process? Do you plan first or dive in? How many drafts do you do?
With my earlier novels, I’d start at page one and keep going till I reached the end, not stopping to revise until the first draft was completed. Now I’ve changed my method and tend to revise continuously; rewriting each chapter or each short story over and over, until I’ve licked it into reasonable shape.
For my last novel, Broken Places, I began with the idea of writing about fear – as familiar to me as the Monday washing, since I’d grown up with a highly anxious mother. And, after the loss of my Catholic Faith, the safe world I’d always believed in, with a kindly God in charge, suddenly capsized, and the universe seemed bleak, chaotic, random and, yes, terrifying.
The fact that many people hide their fears out of embarrassment or shame interests me as a novelist, because I’m fascinated by the secret, hidden parts of people, which often contrast totally with their outward façade. So I invented a “fear-full” protagonist, Eric, but needed to give him some reason for his fears, otherwise readers might dismiss him as a wimp. So I decided he’d be a foundling; a baby abandoned at birth, who spends his entire childhood in care, with constant unsettling moves from one institution to another, and no sense of security or “home”. That would excuse him, I felt; explain his many hang-ups. But first I had to research the whole subject of foundlings and the intricacies of the care system and, later, the complex world of librarianship, since I’d decided I’d make Eric a librarian. One of his tasks is to run Wandsworth Prison’s Book Club, which also needed researching, but after two visits to the prison, the members of the real-life Book Club kindly read these passages, to check I’d got things right.
Once I’d done this preliminary research, the next stage was to resort to what I call my Planning Notebook, where I roughed out all the other characters’ biographies and backgrounds; decided what scenes and settings to include, and worked out the various plot-lines and the overall shape and time-scale of the book. I never actually start writing until I’ve spent quite some time on this basic task of structuring and planning. Putting the first words on the page is invariably the most daunting part and one I always dread. Will the sentences flow? Will I get the tone right? Will the whole thing work? I try to keep my mind open to any new ideas and be willing to change direction – even change the projected end of the book, if necessary. I usually spend the mornings writing and the afternoons revising, and always find the latter easier. Although it’s painstaking work, it doesn’t have that gut-churning quality of walking a tightrope that may suddenly collapse! Revising a book is like “grooming” a horse – you buff up its coat, polish its hooves and remove knots and tangles from a shaggy mane or tail.
Yet, despite my habit of daily revision, I still find I need to write several different drafts, to improve the prose style or tighten up the narrative. Then my editor plays her part in weeding out any inaccuracies or inconsistencies, but, by this stage, the book is there; I’ve reached the end, and all the earlier uncertainty is over.
What was your journey to being a published author?
Well, I’d dreamed of being an author from early childhood, but a series of reverses prevented me from achieving publication until a much later stage. After my second marriage, I took on two stepchildren and found my existing job in Advertising difficult to juggle with the demands of a larger family. So I enrolled at the local Polytechnic, deciding to train as a teacher, which would give me shorter days and longer holidays. While I was there, the current writer-in-residence read some of the stories I’d contributed to the campus magazine and decided to show them to his literary agent. This agent invited me to lunch and gave me an ultimatum: if I ditched my studies and set to work on a novel, he would take me on as a client. This presented me with one hell of a dilemma: did I continue with my future career-plan, or grab this one-in-a-million chance yet risk failure in the process? I followed my heart and said yes, but was so frightened of rejection, I wrote the thing in bed! Cowering under the covers, I scribbled away in a white heat of hope and fear. Fortunately, the resultant novel, Absinthe for Elevenses, was accepted by the first publisher my agent approached and, after that, I just put my head down and produced the next book – and the next – scared, that if I stopped, my lucky break might come to a precipitous end!
What do you think is the greatest myth about being a novelist?
That all writers are rich and famous. If only! Many of us are forced to do a second job, in order to pay the bills. The myth is sustained because we tend to hear only about authors like JK Rowling or John Grisham, earning mega-millions. Another myth is that it’s an exciting, even romantic life. Far from it. We’re not all Barbara Cartlands, dressed in furs and diamonds, reclining on our chaises longues, caressing Pekineses, and dictating our novels to devoted secretaries. Most writers spend their days alone, muffled up in half-a-dozen jerseys, to save on heating costs!
What are you working on at the moment?
I’ve just finished my 17th novel, An Enormous Yes, which will be published in June 2013. It’s the story of three generations of women, all with very different views as to what constitutes the good life, and is told through the persona of Maria, 65. Maria, a frustrated artist, has been living a celibate and dutiful existence with her 90-something mother, in a small, shabby cottage in the wilds of Northumberland. But she undergoes a sea-change when she moves into the granny-flat of her successful daughter’s stylish London home and, slowly, begins to discover a new, wilder, sensuous self. Offered the chance, at this late stage of her life, of total metamorphosis, she faces an agonizing conflict of values: should she say ‘an enormous yes’ to artistic and sexual self-fulfilment, or remain true to her mother’s ideals of duty and service to others?
While I wait for it to be edited and printed, I’m thinking about how to publicize it. It contains some pretty steamy sex-scenes, so my publisher suggested having these read by a suitably sexy actress on You Tube. No, there’s not much hope of me rivalling 50 Shades of Grey! On a more serious note, I’m hoping readers may be interested in the issues the novel examines: whether our present society is just too stressful, especially for us women who are expected to be perfect parents, super-successful career-women, sensational lovers and Keira Knightley lookalikes, all in one pressured life. Add to that the current overload of information, the 24-hour news, and bewildering variety of choice of every type of product and media-outlet, and no wonder we sometimes feel we can’t keep up!
In the next few weeks, I’ll embark on a new short-story collection and I already have several ideas. As soon as I start a new book, the previous one begins to fade from my mind. It’s a bit like having a new baby – the squalling infant demands all my care and attention, so its older siblings are pushed into the background!