Twenty questions
If you could choose any piece of art to hang above your desk, what would it be?
The Times Literary Supplement has an excellent regular online feature in which writers answer twenty questions about their life in writing.
Back in September, when The Eagle and the Hart was about to come out in paperback, I was asked if I’d have a go. It was a lot of fun – but the stream of stellar participants on the TLS site has been such (seriously, do take a look) that my answers haven’t seen the virtual light of day there. And that gives me the welcome chance to discuss them here with you instead.
I’d already been lucky enough to be included in Mathew Lyons’s brilliant Writer’s Bookshelf series. (Seriously, take a look there too.) In his preamble, Mathew pins down exactly what I love about Q&As like these:
It’s intended as a bit of fun, to be taken as lightly or as seriously as the respondent wishes. Is there an element of nosiness? Yes. Of course. But I do think that books are among the most magical, intimate and vital of societal connective tissues, bringing reader and writer together . . .
Part of the fun, I think, is the prompt to be nosy about oneself – so I’m hoping you might join in. Before you see what I came up with, here are the TLS questions. Please leave answers to any or all of them in the comments below, and let’s get discussing.
‘How can I know what I think, until I see what I say?’ (Forster). How much of your writing surprises you?
What is the first thing you remember reading or being read to?
Is there a particular sentence that has stayed with you throughout your life?
What is the most interesting thing on your bookshelf?
Have you ever regretted publishing something?
Proust had madeleines. Which foods or meals trigger your memory?
Have you had any notable experiences meeting authors you admire?
Do you have a favourite bookshop?
How does distraction inform your writing?
What are you currently reading or watching?
Who has influenced your writing?
Which piece of music have you listened to the most in your life?
Do your ideas form themselves in your head or on the page?
What is the worst job you ever had?
If you could choose any piece of art to hang above your desk, what would it be?
What was your favourite text studied at school?
Which font do you write in?
What does a writing day look like for you?
Which other art forms are necessary to your writing?
Where do you seek refuge?
Before I offer my answers I should say that, eight months later, some of them need an update. Thanks to my wonderful sister, I’m reading Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night. Lord, she’s good. Watching: a return to the genius of Twenty Twelve and W1A, while no longer eating out of tins now that my husband has moved to the UK and is cooking for me every night. (I’m a lucky woman, despite Liverpool Football Club’s form this season.)
Now read on . . .
