We recently reviewed Wendy Perriam's latest book Broken Places and were delighted when Wendy agreed to answer a few questions for our Novelicious Readers.
Photo credit: Frank Baron
Can you tell us a little about your average writing day?
I always start early in the morning and postpone household chores, emails and phone calls till later in the day. It’s all too easy to waste vital energy on such trivial distractions! But, first, I make a cup of coffee in my special “writer’s mug” – a Peter Rabbit one I’ve had since babyhood. Perhaps all those busy bunnies, racing round the rim, provide me with a good example of enterprise and exertion!
I prefer to write by hand. But once I’ve done my writing-stint, I do – reluctantly – go to the computer and turn my messily scrawled pages into a neat typescript. Then I spend the afternoon revising this typed draft, continually retyping and re-revising, until my mind is soggy and I realize it’s time to call a halt. At that stage, I turn my attention to emails and household tasks, although making the beds at 5 p.m. seems appallingly sluttish and I hear my long-dead mother’s voice in my head: “Any decent housewife does the chores first thing!”
In the evenings, I edit my students’ scripts and write my daily diary, and then, at last, it’s time for reading. Becoming totally absorbed in another author’s novel is the best part of my day!
When you are writing, do you use any celebrities or people you know as inspiration
Definitely not. As far as celebrities are concerned, I’m so clueless about current movers and shakers, I probably wouldn’t recognize Lady Gaga if she walked into my flat! And, as for using people I know, that can be hazardous. Two of my fellow authors, once extremely close, now no longer speak to each other because one depicted the other in a novel – surely a dire warning to all novelists. Anyway, the role of the fiction-writer is to invent characters, in contrast to the biographer – although even biographers run the risk of ructions and libel-cases.
The most I might do is “steal” certain aspects of someone I know and use them for a character who’s totally unlike them in every other way. For example, Charles, in my novel, Cuckoo, has my father’s love of order and efficiency, but his job, background and general demeanour are a far cry from my Dad’s. And for my novel, Michael Michael, my friend Mary Edwardes allowed me to use her own experience of being married to a Michael Edwardes, whilst also knowing two other, unrelated Michael Edwardes. I also drew on her work as a psychotherapist, but the character I eventually created was nothing like Mary in outlook and personality.
What is your favourite Women’s Fiction book of all time, and why?
My favourite novel of all time, Anna Karenina, is the story of an adulterous woman forced to choose between her tempestuous love for a handsome young officer, and her deep devotion to her child. Although such a plot is familiar in fiction, Tolstoy imbues it with such drama and passion, the reader is gripped from the start. And, as well as the lovers’ story, we’re given a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. I’ve read the book at different stages of my life – once as a teenager, once as a young mother myself, and once in older age – and each time I saw new things in it and gained a deeper understanding of the characters.
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