Writers on Writing - Poppy Z. Brite

POPPY Z BRITE
Inspiration

Writing comes naturally to me... I am inspired by all the arts, not just other writers - films like Sunset Blvd and Blue Velvet, music from Tom Waits or The Beatles, images by Dali or Bosch. As for inspiration from books, there are too many to list! I'll mention Nabakov, Stephen King, Carson McCullers and William Burroughs. Comic book writing can be just as inspiring as literature; Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman is also a great inspiration to me.
Travel can be inspiring too. My favourite place to be is Amsterdam, but perhaps the best place to write is at home. At home I am inspired by a vase of roses on the window sill or the soft fur of my oriental shorthair cat, Nathan. I would describe myself as a cranky, obsessive and voracious writer - but my favourite novel is always the next one...

Writers on Writing - Graeme Williamson

GRAEME WILLIAMSON
Pay Attention

I liked to read from a very young age and started to make up stories for friends when I was eight or nine, so the impulse to lie for amusement began at an early age. In one or two of the schools I went to I met English teachers who brought literature to life for me and showed how it related to the world outside the classroom.
After a time I began to wonder what sort of people wrote books. I admired the ability of these strangers to speak across space and time, to create the illusion of intimacy with the reader. I admired the solitary craft, the endurance of writers -- also the skill with which they played with the language and made a beautiful game of something as simple as human speech.
I read a good deal of Chinese poetry early on and started to write poetry. Some Oriental poets in particular seemed to have found a way of keeping the present moment alive indefinitely. This seemed to come about through an ability to vanish from the foreground and leave the clear view for the reader. Reading their work was like travelling through time. I began to feel that the 'real point' to writing -- if there is such a thing --- is just to pay attention. Last week I was reading an old interview with William Burroughs in which he said the same thing. When you walk down the street, how much do you notice?
I was of course also motivated by a desire for money. At a certain point I took up music, wrote songs and played in bands with the aim of acquiring wealth quickly. However, despite my determination to get rich, the main success I gained as a musician was enjoying playing music whether it made money or not. The process was beneficial in other ways. Through practice I became quite skilful at writing music and lyrics and learned about form and rhythm from songwriting. These skills helped me when I started writing prose fiction.
These days, I would say that I write because I can't imagine not writing. I would like to bring something to the conversation that writers have with the world and with each other. Human life is a prodigious phenomenon and the more versions, interpretations and eyewitness accounts of it there are, the better, I think -- So writing is a good enterprise. The chaff gets blown away and what's left can tell us who we are.

Writers on Writing - Zoe Strachan

ZOE STRACHAN
Compulsive Writing

As soon as I knew how to, I made things up and wrote them down. It comes from reading, and loving books. When you get a good one, a book’s better than anything else. Sometimes it’s entertainment, or learning, or excitement, or escapism. Nothing gets you out of your head like a book. It’s wonderful being exposed to so many ideas, having so many adventures, meeting so many people, the world all swirling around you. All in the comfort of your own home. The idea of children not being able to read or not having access to books horrifies me.
Real life intervenes though, and I went through a period of about five years without writing a word of fiction. It got so I wasn’t very happy, and I think in part it had something to do with not writing. There’s a lot of creative people out there who aren’t doing what they should be doing, and I’m sure they all feel pretty miserable. And it’s usually because they don’t have time to do anything but work, and can’t afford not to, so it’s a vicious circle. Leave it too long, and you’ll stop even rattling the chains.
Writing’s a compulsion too, once you get started, you just can’t help it. It’s true that occasionally it’s a real pain in the arse, when you’re working to a deadline and desperately want to get out and live life a bit rather than staying in, hunched over your computer. But then there are other times, usually very late at night for me, when it’s the best thing in the world, the most fun you could ever have. Maybe I should get out more, but nothing beats it when you’re on a roll, and you’re typing away like crazy, so that when you finally stop your hands are numb. Like all your thoughts and ideas are flowing straight from your brain down your arms and through your fingers onto the page. I love it.
I don’t think much about people actually reading what I write, because I still find that a bit freaky. All the same, I hope they do.

Writers on Writing - Louise Welsh

LOUISE WELSH
Reading Made Me into a Writer

Reading made me into a writer. My family were always on the move. I didn’t have many books, but wherever we were we would visit the public library twice a week. Which was fortunate, because moving so much I didn’t have many friends either. Being an egoist I always put myself at the centre of the novel. I wanted to be the adventurer, the one telling the story, the author. Writers win, even when they lose, they tell the tale.
When I was fourteen I was involved in an accident. Recovery involved lying motionless for three months. I was miserable, humiliated, lonely. Once more books were a refuge. I started to write - bundles of poems. I hope someone incinerated them along with my casts.
After that there was no writing for a long time. I opened a second hand book shop and kept on reading. Then, in my late twenties, I got itchy fingers. I began to meet other writers and for the first time started to think of myself in that way, not just a reader but a writer. Eventually, I wrote a novel and someone agreed to publish it.
Of course I’d rather be a movie star, but next to cinema, books are the best thing.

Writers on Writing - Michel Faber

MICHEL FABER
Making Unforgettable Pictures

At the time of writing what you are reading now, I am sitting next to stack of paper 967 pages high. This is a novel that I started twenty years ago and of which I have written three versions, each good, each better than the last. For seventeen of those twenty years, there was not the slightest sign that I would get any money or any recognition for those 967 pages. There's only one reason why anyone in their right mind would undertake such a labour -- passionate love of language.

Now that I have readers, I enjoy the challenge of making unforgettable pictures materialise in their heads and diverting their thinking onto paths they wouldn't otherwise have travelled. But before I had readers, I worked just as hard to achieve these things, for no one.

Overall, I'd say my work has evolved from being thematically ambitious but rather artificial, to having compassion and warmth. I've reached a balance between the alienation that gives rise to unusual and disturbing ideas, and the life experience that allows me to share human insights. It's interesting to see the way my latest novel - the huge Victorian one - has changed over the years. It used to be a very circular, determinist story. As I rewrote it, it became more good-humoured, more open- ended, more respectful of human potential and the preciousness of love. It's still dark as hell, mind you. But less so than it used to be -- like me.

Writers on Writing - Jeremy Reed

JEREMY REED
Above all - Imagination

I started writing as a child, and ever since leaving school I have somehow managed to support myself on writing books. I suppose I've only managed to continue by not questioning the risk involved, or the enormous vulnerability that such a pursuit entails. Part of my quest has always been to defy the system and to live outside its institutional parameters. Too many writers attempt to make compromises. I believe you're either one thing or the other.
What has always driven me to write is imagination, and a lack of books I want to read. I try to create the sort of poetry and prose that I wish others had written. My models are J G Ballard, Jean Genet, Edmund White, and the poets James Schuyler, Frank O'Hara, John Ashbury and Thom Gunn. I look for risk, zaniness, colour, cutting-edge material, and above all - imagination.
One of the great rewards for me is to have had my work earn high critical acclaim from some of these writers - like J G Ballard, Edmund White and John Ashbury.
I write for at least six hours a day, so to me writing means connecting with the universe in my own way. I hold my pen up to the sun before I write and write into scarlet-covered school exercise books. I write by hand as I like to feed my neurology into the page. Sitting in front of a terminal all day is the occupation of the business sector. I tend to write at home in the morning and in the afternoon I go out to a local café and continue there for two or three hours. I love pop music, so tend to break up the hours of writing with bursts of sonic distraction.
Writing means everything and nothing to me. On the one hand its my obsessive preoccupation, my life-force, and on the other hand I'm consumed by its ultimate meaninglessness. I suppose if you take anything seriously, then you are acutely aware of the downside as well as the up.
I wouldn't wish to do anything else but write, no matter the material insecurity it brings. I made that pact with myself a long time ago. My work is crowded with small detail. I think of myself as a kleptomaniac. I write like I am directing a film,; with great visual clarity. I aim for the kicks that imagery brings, and hope that others too will get off on reading what I've written. Finishing books is the hard part. Knowing I'll never go that way again. And usually it rains at the time, and rain is another form of lyric expression…