I keep thinking about who'll be in the next novel.
Nick Laird
Poet and novelist Nick Laird was recenly awarded the Geoffrey Faber memorial prize for his collection of poems, On Purpose. Glover's Mistake is his second novel.
I've just started reading Frederick Seidel, an American poet, and his work has come as revelation to me.
Where are you right now?
Sitting at the dining table in a flat in Chelsea, New York, surrounded by books and papers about Nepal. I'm trying to write a piece about education and the Maoist insurgency, based on a trip I took there in December.
Where do you write?
Wherever I happen to be.
How do you write?
Slowly. With a laptop, usually, though I take notes with a pen and paper.
What keeps you writing?
Occasionally inspiration, mostly deadlines.
Who do you write for?
For myself and strangers.
Do you discuss your work with anyone?
With my wife sometimes, but normally no-one.
How do you know if your work is good?
I don't.
Do you have any unwritten characters in mind?
Yes, a couple. I keep thinking about who'll be in the next novel. One's an ex-soldier (now a sound engineer), and one's a radio documentary maker.
Which book do you wish you'd written?
I never wish I'd written other people's books, but I love The Great Gatsby, the Rabbit books, Slouching towards Bethlehem, Seize the Day, and Seeing Things.
What is your literary guilty pleasure?
I read a few PG Wodehouse novels for the first time last year. I don't think I'll go back but it was fun while it lasted.
Which writer made you want to write?
In prose, Fitzgerald, Graham Greene, Faulkner, Updike, Bellow, John McGahern, Martin Amis... too many to list. In poetry, Heaney, Longley, Mahon, Muldoon, MacNeice, Yeats, Eliot, Wallace Stevens... too many to list again.
Who's the most exciting author writing today?
I've just started reading Frederick Seidel, an American poet, and his work has come as revelation to me. It's magnificent.
If you weren't writing you'd be...?
I'd still be a lawyer working in international arbitration, which I did for several years.
What next?
I'm teaching at Columbia until the summer, and then hoping to spend the rest of the year on a new poetry book.
Tuesday, 7 April, 2009
In How I write
- David Malouf
- Janice Galloway
- Michael G. Jacob and Daniela De Gregorio
- Alaa Al Aswany
- Nick Laird
- T. C. Boyle
- Nicolas Fargues
- Zoe Heller
- Shalom Auslander
- James Salter
- Ali Smith
- James Frey
- Linn Ullmann
- Julian Barnes
- Joe Dunthorne
- Richard Milward
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Glover's Mistake
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