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When I was three, I had an imaginary companion called Mary. She went everywhere with me, and space had to be left for her to sit at table and in the car. We talked a lot, played games, and generally behaved like brother and sister. When I decided I was getting too old for that sort of thing, she was tragically, but conveniently, run over by a bus.
When I was thirteen, I had an imaginary girlfriend called Gina Lisa Petronelli. I met her when I was out walking on the moors. She was riding past on her pony, which was frightened by a dog and nearly threw her off, but I bravely grabbed its bridle and brought it under control, saving Gina from serious injury. Her grateful father, who owned an ice-cream parlour, offered me free ice cream for life.
I told this to my friends, who believed me! So I lived in constant fear of being found out, and had to dump her, with the feeble excuse that I really couldn’t manage all that ice cream.
When I was eighteen, I met a girl at a dance when I was on holiday, and told her I was from the small town of Cactus Junction in the USA. I’d come to England to study at Oxford University, and hoped she would tell me something about the country and ‘your quaint English customs’.
She was attractive, friendly and seemed to enjoy my company – or was it only this exciting transatlantic guy she liked? If the relationship was going to flourish, I had to know. I dropped my false identity and told her who I really was. I said the pretence was all to do with a sad lack of self-confidence, and hoped she would understand.
She didn’t.
At some stage, I realized that writing about my imaginary characters might be better than letting them loose in real life. They wouldn’t have to be prematurely snuffed out because of unforeseen circumstances; they could grow, develop and have adventures just as I wanted them to.
That’s still how I feel. I have a head full of characters; some are mundane and ordinary, others do amazing and wonderful, or dreadful and spine-chilling things, but they are all clamouring to be let out. If I didn’t write about them, imprison them on the page, they might escape into the real world like my childhood fantasies and wreak havoc.
I write in a small, upstairs room with a ceiling like an upside down V. When the house was built, probably in the middle of the nineteenth century, it was single story, but someone raised part of the roof about seventy-five years ago, though not by much, so all the upstairs rooms have sloping ceilings, and you can only just stand up.
My study has two roof lights, one looking out on trees and up a hillside, the other one with stunning views across the sea to Kintyre, Loch Fyne and beyond. Guess where my desk is? Facing a blank wall! I would find writing with a window in front of me too distracting. I can always stand up, stretch my legs and admire the view when I need a bit of thinking time.
The one drawback is that, because of the sloping ceiling, there isn’t much wall space for bookshelves. So all my books are double-parked, which is a dreadful thing to do to books. When I want a book from the back row, I can never remember where it is, and have to pull all the others out to find it! I’m trying to think of ways of rearranging the furniture to free up more wall space, like having my desk in the middle of the room, but that would feel odd – like being on a raft in the middle of a pond.
I like to be at my desk by nine o’clock, and I write all morning. After lunch I might go for a walk or do some work in the garden, then it’s back for another few hours of writing in the late afternoon and early evening. I do this nearly every day when I’m at home.
I don’t need inspiration to write – that comes in the thinking, the ideas that flash into my mind – but there are times when writing is easy, and times when it isn’t. On some days I feel happy with what I’ve done, but on many days I feel frustrated that I haven’t achieved more, or that what I’ve written isn’t good enough. If I have a run of frustrating days I sometimes think, Why do I do this? But when I have a run of good days, I know why!
I can’t imagine writing a novel without a word processor, as I keep changing things all the time – sentence, paragraph, chapter, book. I revise and revise until I – and my editor – are happy with it. I don’t mind this; I like seeing my work getting better and better until I think it’s as good as I can possibly make it. It’s a slow process, but that’s the way it is. I hope, at the end, that you can’t tell which bits were easy, and which I struggled with.
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