I love finding new authors to read and enjoy, and it's especially brilliant when you find one who's book actually really takes you places and surprises you. It's good to get out of the reading funk. When I was sent The Emergence of Judy Taylor by Angela Jackson, firstly I was completely taken with the beautiful cover, then I found myself lost in the words. I was lucky enough that the author agreed to do an interview for my blog so we, as readers, could get to know a little bit more about her.
Not only has she written this beautiful book, but she is a coach and lecturer in psychology and education at Edinburgh university and she has written features for many newspapers including the Guardian and the Independent. She has also read from her own work at the Edinburgh festival. Here's what she had to say...
First question-bit of a cliche-how did you get into writing?
I've always written, but it's been mainly corporate stuff for the past few years - annual reports, university prospectuses, press releases, course descriptions, etc. I wrote a lot of stories when I was in primary school and, like many people, I always had a pipe dream about writing a novel. I just needed the big idea to hit me before I started it, and once I started writing about Judy Taylor I didn’t stop!
Do you write full time & if so, have you always done this?
I wish! I wrote this novel mainly between the hours of midnight and 3am. I was teaching full-time, marking and seeing clients most evenings and planning lessons at weekends, so that was the only free time I had. Fortunately, I feel at my most creative and quite awake around then, so it fitted in well. I can spot my daytime writing in the book, although there's not much of it left! My favourite bits are the 4am passages, when I was enjoying writing so much I found it hard to stop. I'm quite a determined person, so I knew I'd finish it, although I do think back to when I was at about 50,000 words and flagging slightly, and I wonder where I found the motivation to keep going with no guarantee of publication! Music really helped me to keep going, and I mention that in the Acknowledgements section of the book. If I ever felt stuck, I’d often stop to make a cup of tea, listen to a piece of music and go back and write for ages. I’m sure my neighbours loved me bashing away at my keyboard and playing music at 3am! (Late-night writer tip: Put your keyboard on a folded towel to reduce noise)
Do you have a particular writing style or genre that you prefer?
I have taught psychology almost every day for several years, and I love the subject, so I tend to be far more interested in characters and motivation and less about plot.
As i mentioned in my review, your novel is full of strong characters-how do you develop these characters as you write?
As soon as I started writing the novel, the characters felt very real to me. I think perhaps they come across as strong because readers can see their flaws and insecurities. I feel very connected to Judy and quite defensive of her right to make the choices she did, even though they might not be popular; I wanted to show her fallibility, her humanness, her resilience. I saw the characters almost like friends, so it was easy to conjure them up again each time I sat at my computer. I also wanted the older characters to be as visible and as three dimensional as the younger ones – I think there is a tendency to marginalise older people in our society (I had a piece of research published related this subject) and wanted them to have a strong and influential presence in this book.
What do you hope readers will get from reading your novel?
First and foremost, I hope they enjoy it. One of the key themes in the book is choice – the choices we make during our lifespan – so perhaps it might stir readers to reflect on their own choices.
What is your writing process-do you map it out first? Write a bit at a time?
I make notes all the time. I have a box filled with scraps of paper – thoughts and observations from everyday life, and jottings based on interesting research findings. I started writing the book as a film, but after the first 100 pages or so I decided to switch to writing it as a novel because it seemed more natural to me. In terms of plot, the initial synopsis I wrote bears little resemblance to the final manuscript; it was almost like my ideas for what the characters were going to do were at odds with how they actually developed.
I mention the beautiful cover for the novel in my review, what was the thinking behind that?
It is a beautiful cover. I guess this is more a question for my editor, Victoria Hughes-Williams, who wrote the brief for the cover, and for the cover designers, Debbie Powell who illustrated it and Louise Turner at KS Agency who did the layout, but I can tell you that although the cover doesn’t give much away, it does reflect a lot of what's inside. The starlings are very important because their social behaviour is similar in some ways to our own. Just as we are highly influenced by those closest to us, so starlings navigate by making small adjustments based on their closest neighbours' actions. They like to be in the thick of things, at the centre of the murmuration, which makes them less exposed to danger, and I think a lot of community life is like that. I can still go back to the small town where I grew up and be enveloped and folded back into the place very quickly – it feels safe and easy to be there. I think, once you've read the book, the cover makes perfect sense. And I feel fortunate that the book looks so beautiful that people will want to pick it up in bookshops.
How much of you is reflected in your novels?
I suppose it's unavoidable that I would write about things I really care and think about: psychology, relationships, feminism, mortality, music, the concept of home, the illusions and realities around choice. My editor said that it was laugh-out-loud in parts, and humour is really important to me – I love making people laugh. I made myself laugh (and cry) writing it! I'm certainly not in the same situation but, like Judy, I grew up in a small town, and I understand how she feels like she's on a treadmill, and how duty (or society's view of what our duties entail) can be stifling. I fight against that a lot; I am always asking myself if I am really living, really choosing, really making the most of my time here. Freud talked about how we avoid thinking about our own mortality, and that is threaded throughout the book in various ways.
Do you have any plans to develop this novel further, write sequels, turn it into a series?
Sure, I'm open to doing something else. I miss the characters now I'm not writing about them! If it's made into a film, I'd love to be involved in the scriptwriting process.
Your fabulous launch party (which is already has an overflowing guest list) at Looking Glass Books in Edinburgh is on 18th April-the same day as your book is published. How do you feel leading up to your publication day?
I'm really looking forward to the launch at Looking Glass Books! Now I've held a copy of the book, it all feels more real. It was a work in progress for three years and has been a complete manuscript for a year – now it's a book. However, nobody told me about this limbo period just before publication when the book is printed and sent out for review. Every night I go to sleep thinking about the people who will be reading it for reviewing purposes. So, I would say I am feeling excited, nervous and pretty sleep-deprived.
Which other authors inspire you or are there any you particularly enjoy reading?
If you put me in a room with constantly refilled cups of tea and the books of Anne Tyler, Richard Yates and Helen Schulman, I'd be very happy. I also really enjoy Siri Hustvedt, Jeanette Winterson, Lisa Glatt, Hanif Kureishi, Emily Perkins and Maria Semple. I loved Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes and Twenty-One Locks by Laura Barton. For short stories it would be Lorrie Moore and Lydia Davis. Nora Ephron, David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, Alexei Sayle and Sloane Crosley make me laugh. I often have my nose stuck in psychology textbooks and journals, which I love, but I really admire writers who make all that stuff more accessible and enjoyable, such as Oliver Burkeman, Michael Foley, Oliver Sacks and Richard Wiseman. I love Simon Armitage's writing, prose and poetry but much prefer hearing him read it aloud than reading it myself. I am awestruck by Diana Athill, Fay Weldon, Germaine Greer and Alan Bennett. I managed to speak briefly with Fay Weldon at Edinburgh Book Festival a couple of years ago, and she was incredibly encouraging and urged me to enjoy this time prior to the publication of my debut novel.
Finally...what are you working on right now?
I'm doing what Fay Weldon told me to do! I'm also working on my next novel, which is about infidelity. I'm interested in why people commit adultery, how much people will put at risk, and how adept we are at justifying our actions or choosing not to see what's in front of us. The psychology behind all that is fascinating.
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