Nine Questions
In this new series Ink Sweat & Tears talks to practicing writers about their process and craft.
1. Where do you write? (do you have an office, room, bus or train journey that you find yourself and your writing? etc)
Because I live alone, I’m a bit spoilt for choice. I work in a downstairs study where I have an oldish desktop pc, but this room is about to be transformed into a sitting/dining room, and the desktop pc transferred to the attic bedroom which is to be my main study. I also work in a tiny boxroom study upstairs, and here is where I’ll write and re-write in handwriting. Yes, I am in antique mode here, scribing and scribbling away. I also write in cafes (love doing this) while people watching out of the corner of my eye, but also often putting myself in a bubble of concentration so I am not distracted as I write. I write on trains because a lot of my life is spent traveling on trains. I also write sitting on my old sofa, on my bed, on the beach, sitting on benches along the coast paths in and around Falmouth, and anywhere else that takes my fancy.
2. How do you write? (into a notebook or straight onto a computer? etc)
Ah I see I’ve already touched on that. I write first and other drafts into notebooks (currently I have about 32 on the go, which makes for some productive chaos, as I often lose a poem for quite a while and then rediscover it (with all its faults, of course). I write reviews and discursive prose directly onto the screen, though I often have a few notes or key phrases to work from. Editing is a process of putting the poem draft on to the screen, printing it out, editing it, putting the changes back on to the draft, leaving the whole thing alone,weeks or months, then resuming the shaping of the poem.
3. Roughly how much time do you spend each week on creative writing related activities? (writing, editing, correspondence & submissions – give a daily average if possible)
It varies enormously, depending on that particular week’s commitments. If I am tutoring a residential course, then very little of my own creative work gets done. If I have a few days or a week to myself then I might work all day and every day on creative work, avoiding the admin. Then I’ll squeeze the admin into whatever time remains. In an ideal world there’d be no admin.
4. What time of day do you usually write?
Once upon a time I’d have said that I was a morning writer and I still value the freshness of the early morning, and its liminal quality, as dreams and sleep experience still wind their tendrils around the imagination. But over the past few years I’ve found myself writing and re-drafting late at night. Afternoons are best spent reading, sleeping or walking, or seeing friends. (In that elusive ideal world).
5. Do you set yourself a daily target for writing?
No.
6. What does it feel like to write?
When I’m writing, no matter what stage of the writing, I feel I am exactly myself, the person I was meant to be, if that doesn’t sound too high-faluting! It is an exhilarating and extra-real time, and however frustrating the problem that presents itself along with the joys, it is still the best place ever to be, in my head and in the world.
7. Are there any stimuli that will usually trigger you into writing?
Things overhead in the street, anecdotes and memories told to me especially by the elders of my family or the wider communities. Weird things, misprints, in newspapers. Snippets of info told to me by continuity announcers on Radio 3. Movies. Books. Poetry. Dreams. The sea. The moon. Nature. Memory. Emotions and recollections that can only be approached by writing a poem about them, not all of these poems go into print, I keep some as private communications between me and myself.
8. Do you work in silence or have background noise? If you do have sounds, what are you listening to now?
I’m listening to a string quartet by Brahms, on Radio 3. I have R3 on all day, switching it on after an hour or so of silent reflection (if I am at home, have space for it) and it stays on until I turn in at night. I’ve been listening to R3 (and formerly The Third Programme) since I was 14 years old. It has been a huge part of my life, and I’ve learned so much from it. I love to have music as I’m writing, and I think its rhythms and cadences go into my poetry often without my realizing it.
9. What are you working on now?
I have a new book out from Bloodaxe Books this October, called Sandgrain and Hourglass. This means that I am now at the stage of not having to think about the composition of a new collection, that is far in the future, so – I am writing poems that are free of that structure-pressure, it is a very freeing stage, and I just love it. I’m combing notebooks for undiscovered poems, writing new things, editing and processing, and I’m also tinkering with a few possible short stories.
* Penelope Shuttle's
last collection Redgrove’s Wife
(Bloodaxe Books,
2006), was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize.
Her latest collection is Sandgrain and
Hourglass (Bloodaxe Books,
2010).
