This is my first author interview- the first of many I should hope! It was a really great experience and Marcus was incredibly interesting to talk to- and also a lovely guy! I have had to edit a lot of the interview because there are a few sneaky questions I asked for advice about my own writing, so let me know if you would like some writing advice from Marcus as he gave me some very good pieces of advice. I hope you like the interview, and please comment below with your thoughts!
How did you start writing and what is the
thing you enjoy most about it?
The significant thing that happened was
that I went to university still not knowing what I wanted to do and when I left
university I still didn’t know, so I went to work in a
bookshop, because I liked books and it was a nice environment and that was the
trigger for me thinking ‘real people write these books’. So that made me
realise that real living people write books and they get sold in bookshops so I
started to try writing myself. It took me a few years and I wrote a few books
which weren’t published but they got me an agent and then the big, whole novel
that I wrote was the first one that my agent sent off to Orion who I’ve been
with ever since.
One thing that I enjoy the most about it?
Well that’s hard, because it is just so fantastic! One thing is that you’re
your own boss- that’s worth so much money to me. Because you are free to do
whatever you want to do with your life on a daily basis and not having someone
to crack the whip, and you’re also not doing a job that you hate, which I have
done before. That’s the lifestyle part, but for the writing part it’s because you are
getting paid for the strange thoughts in your head. You think of something and
put it down on paper, and then people are buying it- that’s something I still
haven’t actually got over.
Where did the idea of ‘She Is Not
Invisible’ come from?
Originally it was because I had been trying
to write a book about coincidence for many years, and I was failing, and I gave
up a lot of times. Five years went by, and I was writing other things that did
succeed, but I finally realised that coincidence was a really hard thing to
write about and usually it doesn’t work when it is done, because coincidence is
generally what a bad writer uses to get out of a weakness in their plot, and we
as readers don’t like coincidence because if something overly convenient
happens we don’t believe it, and so therefore to write a book where those
things are happening seemed to me to be self-defeating. So then I had the idea
to write a book about a writer trying to write a book about coincidence
instead, because then I could still talk about all the same things that
interested me but they were at arms-length. Then, coincidently, at the same
time I saw a film about a blind girl and somehow I thought it would be very
interesting to have a protagonist who was blind. I then spent a couple of years
researching that side of it.
So what is it that interests you about coincidence and
why did you decide to write about it?
Everyone likes a coincidence, and the thing
about it is that it only takes something relatively small to happen for you to
get that tingle, and if a really big coincidence happens (I’ve had some strange
things happen to me), it really does freak you out. It struck me that
coincidence would be a good subject to write about because everybody shares
their coincidences if one happens to them.
What was it like working with the students
at New College, and how do you think they reacted to your project?
They were amazing, and the very first time
I went to New College I was in a very bad place writing-wise, but I still had this idea about
coincidence and a blind protagonist. I wasn’t sure what I was doing there at
first because didn’t know a book was going to come out of it, but I went up there
and I went to the librarian first and said what I wanted to do and she was
great, really welcoming. I was very honest with the students and I said that I
was trying to write a book but I’m not sure I could do it, but they were so
welcoming and I came away that first day feeling that it was the best visit I
had ever made to a school. The students were amazing to talk to, they were a
great group to speak to and afterwards I came away feeling guilty because I
felt that they had given me so much, and had really cheered me up and made me
feel better about what I was trying to do. They were so honest about what it’s
like and the tough times that they have and the way people treat them.
What made you choose to write from the perspective
of a 16 year old visually impaired teenage girl?
Why not? This is my thirteenth novel and I
have written with different genders, ages and characters so you don’t want to do the
same thing every time so I’m always looking for something a bit new and
different to do. Originally, I knew it was going to be a massive challenge, but
because I had written lots of books it’s very important you don’t get stuck
doing the same things. Writing from the perspective of a blind protagonist
seemed like the way to do something different! The other thing was that
unconsciously I had made a connection between the concept of fortune and
destiny and blindness, and it was only when I had finished writing the book
that I found the quote from Francis Bacon that forms the title that I realised
what that link is, so I was stumbling around in the dark for a while, and then
that happened by chance that I found a link that made sense.
Why did you decide to write about something
completely outside the realms of your own experience?
The hardest thing to do when writing is to
keep on going, and keep being sufficiently excited by an idea that you go and
sit by yourself in a room for eight hours a day for several months until you
have written 80,000 words- you really need to love what you’re doing to want to
do that! If you want to keep on writing to maintain sufficient excitement you
need to challenge yourself and try to push yourself and develop yourself.
What would you say is the most important
aspect of a novel: plot, character or setting?
I think that they are all equally important
but I think different writers have different strengths and starting points and
what you need to end up with is a book that’s pretty powerful. I used to always
start with plot- plot as in concepts and ideas or something in history, and that
would then develop into the plot and once I have that I create the setting.
Then out of those two things I create the characters to do the things I want
them to do. I realised that I needed to start working on character a lot more,
which I have been trying to do recently. My editor never picks holes in my plot
but finds faults in my characterisation.
Why did you decide to write teen fiction?
The bookshop that I worked in was a
children’s bookshop in Cambridge and so I was re-discovering books that I read
as a child, and at that time there were a lot of exciting children’s writers
like Philip Pullman. I started to realise that these books were really exciting
because you could do anything, there was enormous freedom, and as long as you
do it convincingly that it’s plausible within its own world you can write way
more adventurous stuff than you can write in adult fiction. I wanted that
freedom and that excitement to write whatever I wanted.
How do you think books can change the
world?
I think they can, because the way that change
happens is that if you believe it and you tell someone else then they believe
it too, and that’s how things can change. Books can change people’s minds, open
doors to them. Even if you are in impoverished circumstances you can still go
to the public library and pick up a book and it can take you anywhere in the
world. That isn’t necessarily about travelling but about showing you different
points of view, and I think that one of the main things that is helping people
is that reading makes you realise that not everyone has the same point of view
and the dangerous things that happen in the world is when you think, ‘everyone
should think how I do’. I think books
can be part of that change.
Along For The Ride- Sarah Dessen
