"I once wrote a piece in sub-zero conditions in an unheated hut in the Arctic Circle, – I didn’t mind, because I was alone."
John Burnside
John Burnside has published five works of fiction and ten collections of poetry, including The Asylum Dance, which won the 2000 Whitbread Poetry Award. Wakig up in Toytown is his most recent novel.
Where are you right now?
I'm in the kitchen, which is the only room with an open fire. I wouldn't normally write here, but in the cold weather I quite often work at the kitchen table, after everyone's fed and the kids are in bed.
Where do you write?
I write all over the place. On walks, in the garden, in the kitchen, in my study. If it's a continuing project - something big, like a novel - I try to stick to one place, so I can spread out and then, when I have to stop, I can just leave things as they are. Usually, that's the study. Even then, the kids might go in and pinch a notebook or something and draw in it. I have a good many notebooks with drawings of birds and pigs in them. Of course, somewhere under the drawing in the best idea I ever had, now illegible,
How do you write?
I write on the run quite often. Making notes, in a hasty scrawl, on scraps of paper or notebooks. I work full-time and I have two young sons, so just sitting down and writing can feel like a luxury. I have, in past years, gone away for a month at a time - thanks to retreats like the one on Jura, run by Jura Distillery and the Scottish Book Trust, for example - to get concentrated writing time. I often write at night, by the stove, when everyone else is in bed. I do need solitude to write - everything else is an extra. I once wrote a piece in sub-zero conditions in an unheated hut in the Arctic Circle, snow outside and a lake under ice - I didn't mind, because I was alone.
What keeps you writing?
I'm not sure. When I'm in the middle of something, it's curiosity to see how it will turn out, when I'm not, it's the excitement of the tabula rasa, the blank space where ideas come in spite of me, and I have to see them through. I suppose the other thing is that I'd like to write better. Choose better words. Put them in the right order. It's often at that level.
Who do you write for?
An odd question. I don't think I've given it proper thought. Sometimes, I think, I'm writing for the ghost of someone I used to know. I suppose a possible answer to the question is 'for myself' - but if that's true, it's for my other self, the one who isn't socialised, isn't allowed out in company much, and isn't usually allowed to speak for himself. That one.
Do you discuss your work with anyone?
At a certain stage, maybe. But I'm at my best when I'm on my own. I'd rather let things come than talk about it and maybe have the talk get in the way of that. It's got something to do with spontaneity, or maybe you'd say extemporisation. Time is different when other people are around, and I need time to slow down to really get going - slow down isn't quite right, but it's got to do with that suspended quality being alone gives you. When I've got something together, it goes to a couple of people at my agents', and to my editor.
How do you know if your work is good?
I never think it's good enough. But I know when it's as good as I can make it. That has something to do with the sound of it, if the rhythm is right. If the rhythm is true. You know when things are true by their rhythm. That's the case with people too, but it can take a while to make out the deep, underlying rhythm. When you do, it can be a surprise - or a shock. With a character, it's the opposite - you know them from the inside out, you start with the rhythm, the soul if you like, then you dress them in their street clothes and send them to the corner shop.
Do you have any unwritten characters in mind?
Oh, yes.
Which book do you wish you'd written?
A la recherché du temps perdu at one end of the scale; The Turn of the Screw at the other. I love James and Proust, and would be grateful to write a single sentence that could compare with either of those masters. On the other hand - and I'm sure this is interesting only to me - the book that is inscribed in my blood, the book tattooed on the skin of my heart, is Moby Dick.
What is your literary guilty pleasure?
I love reading rock biographies. The story of the Allman Brothers, that kind of thing. I'm a full-time nerd about stuff like that.
Which writer made you want to write?
I'm not sure it was a writer. Maybe a painter. Chardin, say. Or Caravaggio. People will tell me from time to time that my books are dark, (and worse things) but I want to honour the world around me. Its light and shadow. Its colours. I think of writing as the darkest possible celebration. I see that in Caravaggio - the occasion is sombre, perhaps, but the colours are vibrant. And in Chardin, the commonplace things, the glass, the china bowl, the dead animal. The physicality of things and that underlying rhythm in everything.
Who's the most exciting author writing today?
I'm not sure exciting is what I am after. Don DeLillo renews the world - and language - whenever he puts pen to paper. Hilary Mantel gives me a sense of the justness of things, the right weight of an event or an object, the wonderful materiality of language. Mark Doty's Still Life with Oysters and Lemon is as fine as anything I've read in a long time and I go back to it often.
If you weren't writing you'd be...?
If I had even a sliver of talent, I'd be painting. But I haven't. Maybe walking on an island in the Arctic Circle. It's called Kvaloya and it's too long since I was there.
What next?
I'm writing a book now, about looking, and seeing, and superstition, that's set on Kvaloya. After that, a rock biography. Really. Well, sort of.
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Waking Up in Toytown is published by Jonathan Cape.
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Wednesday, 27 January, 2010
In How I write
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