Emma Jane Unsworth is
about to launch her new novel Animals. She has been tangled up in a blog-web entitled ‘The Creative Process Blog Tour’
in which you answer four questions about your writing process and then pass the
baton to two more writers. I am one of Emma’s chosen two, how flattering! Below
are my answers, here are Emma’s answers, and I have scored two terrific contributors for my part: Zoe Lambert, poet, and Alex Niven, poet and music writer, who will post their responses soon. And the chain goes on! It's lovely to be part of it. Hope you enjoy!
What am I working on?
I’m tweaking my novel
The Shakespeare Girl. At this stage the notion of second
and third drafts is no longer applicable. It feels finished but I suppose I won’t be able to leave it alone
until an agent wrenches it from my badly paper-cut hands. So what I’m really working
on is finding an agent. In terms of writing, my blogging and arts work is
ongoing and thankfully about to increase. I’ve started the research for a
non-fiction project which I’m already very excited about. I’ve finished the
research for another novel about the Blitz Kids and black magic. But the next
thing I’m actually writing is a play. I sound like Daisy from Spaced now I realise… Trust me, these
things will materialise though! I recently saw two of my ideas turned into
finished pieces by somebody else and it made me realise with a start that you
can’t sit on your ideas for too long because they are all floating around out
there for other people to pluck out of the air…
How does my work differ from others of its genre?
This
is definitely a question for a more seasoned and experienced writer than
myself. If I knew what genre The Shakespeare
Girl was I would be able to find a home for it much easier I’m sure!
Literary-comic fiction perhaps? And a bit of pastoral. Maybe ‘tragical-comical-historical-pastoral,’ to quote Hamlet. I have a good idea of who my
readership might be at the very least, if not the genre of the writing.
Why do I write what I do?
It’s really the
strength of an idea that compels me to get something down. The first thing I
ever wrote was a silly novella about a couple of temps who fall in love and win
a huge amount of money and go on an adventure to experience life all over the
world. I was lonely and broke at the time, no passport, no girlfriend, no boyfriend,
and the fantasy of the story was a comfort so I ended up writing it all down
and it proved to be great escapism. With The
Shakespeare Girl the idea of digging up the playwright’s grave is so tantalising,
not just because of what we might find but because of how it might make the
world react. The idea never fails to fill me with curious energy and it was
sufficient to construct an entire narrative and cast of characters around it.
How does my writing process work?
I’m still very much learning the craft but for
the most part I know what the final point of the story is and I try to move the
story methodically towards it. For instance, character A needs to learn
something about character B: what’s the best way to unfold that discovery? The
funniest or saddest or most unexpected way? I try out various scenarios in my
head, often involving dialogue that I say to myself. When I’ve settled on the ‘method’
I map the chapter and fill it with detail and then I write that in one sitting
and edit the following day, and then it’s done. It won’t get edited again until
a larger chunk of the story is written because the context is such a big part
of it, you can’t edit in isolation. I’m a very good editor but a nervous
writer; the initial writing incubates for a good while before it hits the page.
