Ali Smith / Features / Untitled Books

Nicola Barker and Javier Marias are the most exciting authors writing today.

Ali Smith

Ali Smith, author of The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy and her new short story collection The First Person and Other Stories, tells us how she writes.

I wish I'd written Joseph Roth's The Legend of the Holy Drinker. It is such a good kind forgiving hopeful book.

Where are you right now?

At my desk in my loft, which is also my bedroom, writing to you.

Where do you write?

Right here. There's a plant on one side and a dormer window on the other, and a CD burner, and a lot of detritus, and next to this desk, which is the computer desk, another desk covered in piled up books.

How do you write?

Hoping that I'll be able to, that I'm listening properly, and that I'll get it right.

What keeps you writing?

Mortgage payments, and the hope that I'll get it right.

Who do you write for?

For the book I'm working on, first. Then for the ten or so (I imagine about

ten) readers who will like it enough to find it a relief to read.

Do you discuss your work with anyone?

Yes, but only two people, both very close to me, and only rarely. It sometimes helps to hear embryonic ideas out loud, but only if it feels safe to say it out loud, and I think it's the same kind of security as being able to, say, sleep very soundly or feel completely at home next to somebody.

How do you know if your work is good?

You don't. At least, I never do.

Do you have any unwritten characters in mind?

No, because they only exist in the written.

Which book do you wish you'd written?

Today I wish I'd written Joseph Roth's The Legend of the Holy Drinker. It is such a good kind forgiving hopeful book. Roth is great. This was his final book, written when he was ruined, ill, dissolute, depressed, weeks away from dying. It has a lightness born of great darkness and great weight. So I'm saying I wish I'd written it with caveats that know what it took to write such a book.

What is your literary guilty pleasure?

Staying in bed for an hour first thing every morning with a pot of coffee and a book I choose at random off the books waiting to be read.

Which writer made you want to write?

All of them, I think. And someone whose name I don't know, who wrote a story called Grey Conscience in my elder brothers' and sisters' secondary school magazine, which I read when I was about seven.

Who¹s the most exciting author writing today?

Nicola Barker and Javier Marias.

If you weren't writing you'd be...?

Taking the ripe apples off the trees in the garden.

What next?

I'm off out to the garden to do that right now.

Thursday, 2 October, 2008