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Many of my dreams have to do with the sea. Sometimes they concern Antarctica, an exciting prelude to going into the interior with other people.
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Why do you write?
It is the one ambition I’ve ever had. Some bleak days I think that my desire to write is no more than an unshakeable habit. On other days I think that writing allows me to have and make other worlds. All the difficulty of writing is in service to this freedom. Also, the habit of writing renews experience: it makes me notice things with a new distance and curiosity, and wonder how they might work in writing; it means that I always have something to think about on the train.
Are you a vivid dreamer?
Yes, but my most vivid dreams are nightmares. They make me glad to wake. I miss the dreams of flying that I had when I was growing up.
... (read more)Why do you write?
It’s not really a choice, but a necessity. Usually, it is the pressure of an idea or an emotional state that only seems to be satisfactorily released as words on a page. Sometimes, if there is a choice involved, it is in choosing not to write.
Are you a vivid dreamer?
Yes. A lot of my work originates in dream. Glissando began as a transcription of a dream I had longer ago than I care to admit.
... (read more)Why do you write?
To stop time, to figure it all out.
Are you a vivid dreamer?
Yes. And prone to sleep talking and singing and, absurdly, trumpet fanfares. As a child I had a recurring dream of flying crocodiles, concluding with the subtitle ‘Christian Television Association’.
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A Confederacy of Dunces always makes me laugh. The book I’ve read the most number of times is a collection of essays about animals and insects called The Red Hourglass, by Gordon Grice.
... (read more)Why do you write?
It seems to be the only way I can make sense of things. I am often surprised that everybody doesn’t feel like this. It is such a profound thrill to work with fiction and to see the patterns emerge, to feel the rhythm of the story as it develops.
Are you a vivid dreamer?
There’s a thing that happens – I am asleep, but I seem to be awake watching a full colour dramatisation on a kind of screen. If I shut my eyes the scene disappears, but when I open them, it resumes and does not stop.
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Are you a vivid dreamer?
Yes, in general I am, but I have three kinds of dream: those that are dully bureaucratic at root; those that revisit the emblematic landscapes or cities of earlier dreams; and wild, coloured dreams with a green welcoming ocean or dark monsters.
... (read more)Why do you write?
To find out what I know, to remember what I can, and to make sense of it all – but also to make nice patterns; to get less ignorant if not adequately wiser; and because, like all obsessives, I get morose if I don’t.
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Why do you write?
For the language, for the ideas, for the pleasures of the imagination, for the unorthodox hours, for the solitude.
Are you a vivid dreamer?
To dream you need to sleep, and sleep, like sport, is not a skill I have ...
At the moment, my hero is Rimbaud’s self in his Les Illuminations. Who knows who it will be tomorrow? And my heroine? Always Lo.
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