In our Meet the Novelist series Flic Everett, writing as F.L Everett, has just debuted her Edie York cosy crime series with A Report of Murder. And her second novel, Murder in a Country Village, is now on sale.

How would you describe yourself?

I am small, extremely determined, highly anxious, and a very loving – some might say smothering – mother to my wonderful grown-up son. I’m very bad at staying tidy but like to have huge, sweeping blitzes of the house every few weeks, so everything is perfect for 10 minutes, before it all atrophies again.

I love cooking. I’m vegetarian/pescetarian, while my husband basically has the diet of a Paleolithic tiger, so I often cook complex and fancy meals for myself. Although Ottolenghi’s recipes make my brain hurt. I love baking and eating out, but have been on a rolling low-key diet for months, so I’m not doing much of either at the moment – and eating out is increasingly too expensive. And I like crap reality TV and really good TV dramas, and my favourite films are mostly pre-1950.

Can you tell us more about your unique sense of style?

I love clothes. I used to own a vintage shop in Manchester and I still miss it. My greatest treat is a proper rummage in an old-fashioned charity shop and a pile of bargains. I’m quite lazy about beauty though – I’ve just had my first haircut in two years, and I can’t do Botox because I’m too scared of it.

How important are friends and family?

I have a lot of friends who I value hugely, on and offline. As an only child, I have a very small but wonderful family – I go back to Manchester a great deal to see them. I’m married to Andy, my third and last husband, who is very clever and understands me.

Aside from the people I love, what makes me happiest is animals and reading. We’ve got two spaniels and a little black cat. When I’m away, I miss them so much it’s almost physical. Every childhood photo shows me clutching some small animal or other, or cuddling a pony – not mine, I’m not very posh – or holding up a reluctant cat. I wanted to be a vet, but I’m rubbish at science.

Apart from writing, what are you good at – and what are you not so good at?

I’m good at buying presents, finding bargains, listening, decorating, drawing, and arguing in print. I’m bad at parking, concentrating on anything but reading or writing, maths, science and arguing in person because it makes me panic.

Where do you like to write?

I hate writing in cafes. I feel constantly on edge, aware of crying babies and beset by the whacking sound of that little coffee thing they’re always bashing. I feel like I need to keep ordering stuff I don’t want so they don’t chuck me out and I honestly can’t understand why people enjoy it.

Equally, I don’t write outdoors. “Ooh, lovely day, look at me, working in the garden!” Yes, with your pink, peeling nose and the sun glaring off the screen. No, thank you. I work in my house, in silence – I can’t focus any other way. You may not believe I’m fun at parties, but I am.

Any particular spot in the house?

I have a sort-of office in the spare bedroom of our two-bedroom cottage, but the dogs either whine outside the door, or bash their way in and jump about, plus Andy likes to have the news on in the living room so I get distracted by reporters shouting about politics. I prefer to work in the kitchen on a really un-ergonomic bentwood chair piled with cushions, so I can reach the table, as I’m 5’1”. That way, I’m near the kettle, the radiator, the fridge and the dogs. Plus the cat has a box on the table, so I can reach out to stroke her if she’s lying in it. At the moment she prefers our bed, but cats are very changeable.

Are you a handwriting merchant?

Good grief, no. I used to read books by Americans that often mentioned writing in yellow legal pads and they always sounded quite exotic, but I’ve never found one. I have terrible handwriting. If I write Andy a shopping list he has to go through it, translating worries into cherries. I work on a MacBook Air. Occasionally, I make notes in my phone if something strikes me, but notepads really are just for notes. For actual book, it has to be typing in Word. I am that Mac person who the PC people despise.

Do you have any writing rituals?

I have to be dressed properly, I have to be sitting upright and, while I will allow Andy to come in and make bread, and I can cope with the tumble drier being on, any more noise than that is unacceptable to me and my jangling nerves.

So, you’re a creature of habit?

Yes, I must have a boiling hot bath every day, or I feel uneasy. I don’t drink much, after years of drinking quite a lot – or a normal amount for a journalist. I stopped for four years and now I have the odd one, but I’m a Virgo and a health hypochondriac. I don’t want to be responsible for my own death, so I try to be reasonably healthy. I go for long walks where we live in the country in Scotland. It’s my dream to see an otter.

Do you eat and drink while you write?

A great deal of tea with skimmed milk. I don’t really drink much else. I can’t write while I eat, so I have to have a little break. I’ll read the sidebar of shame or a bit of whatever book I’m reading – currently the new Lisa Jewell. I try to have a proper lunch break to give my brain a rest, so I eat leftovers or soup or whatever’s in the fridge.

Do you write to music or do you prefer quiet?

Silence and solitude. Although I was writing a short story for a mag the other day and struggling to get in the mood, so I did play a bit of French accordion music to help me write about Paris.

What’s the strangest thing you do to inspire yourself?

I don’t think I do anything strange, I’m quite boring. Perhaps as a freelance journalist for 30 years, you get over the idea of inspiration very quickly. I’m still a journalist, as well as a novelist. If I’ve got a deadline, I just do it, and the same goes for writing novels. Sit down, bash it out. Some days it’s easier than others, but I don’t drift about by ponds, waiting for my muse to strike.

What if you’re exhausted?

If I’m tired, I favour a very hot bath with a good thriller, and a cuddle with the dogs. And in times of exhaustion it’s nice to have a change of scene – even a visit to the cinema – to immerse yourself in something else for a bit. And I go for a walk nearly every day, so if things just aren’t working, I take the dogs out and go up a hill. See? Boring.

How do you overcome distractions and procrastination?

I don’t even think about them. I started as a journalist when I was 21, working from home. By 22, I had a baby, and by 24 I was divorced. I had to make a living, so that’s what I did – it’s no different from sitting in an office. If I dick about, I’m not earning money and I’m annoying my editors, and they probably won’t use me again. That’s enough to keep me at it. Having said that, I spend a lot of time on social media – it has made life much less lonely for writers.

Are many of your characters based on real people?

None of them. I always find it odd when people ask who they’re based on, as if the whole point of being a writer isn’t making things up. I invent all of them – it’s my favourite part of the entire process. I think all plot should spring from character, even in crime novels. It’s very important to me to make my cast of people believable. Of course, we’re all influenced by who we are, and who we’ve met over the years, and I’m sure there’s a bit of me in Edie – but really, they’re people I’d like to meet, rather than people I know. Although I did borrow one tiny trait of my mum’s in my second book to describe a character and she did recognise it, but nobody else would!

Read more: meet another novelist; Mhairi McFarlane on romcoms and real people…

Are there other genres you’d like to explore with your writing?

I constantly have ideas for books in other genres – the only kind that doesn’t remotely interest me is fantasy. Books about elves and kingdoms are in my Room 101. They always seem utterly devoid of humour – “Sire, we shall feast well this night!” – and I find them horrifically dull.

I’m not keen on horror, space, goddesses, futuristic dystopias or books about everyone on Earth suddenly waking up with a new power. I do enjoy witches, time travel and pure science-y sci-fi, though. Blake Crouch does this well. I like thrillers, spy novels, good rom coms, gripping literary fiction – books about real people in real situations. I would happily write any kind, as long as it’s character-led.

I do love cosy crime as it ticks many of my enjoyment boxes, but perhaps one day I’ll try other types too. I did write a psychological thriller during lockdown, but looking back, it was a bit bleak, and a bit too informed by my last, very traumatic, divorce. Best left, I think!

Are there any hard and fast rules you set yourself for your stories or characters?

I try to avoid cliché. Other than that, there are certain unspoken rules about cosy crime. You wouldn’t make your lovable protagonist the killer, for instance – and the ending has to be satisfactory. You can’t just leave all the threads dangling. But beyond that, no.

I’m very careful about dialogue. My books are set during the war, so I spend a lot of time on etymology websites, checking on slang and whether certain expressions were in use. I wish TV scriptwriters would do the same. I’m still not over Downton Abbey describing Lady Edith as ‘feisty.’

Will the internet and people’s shortened attention spans ever mean the end of the novel?

This is an Oxford entrance exam question. I know, because I did the exam, then screwed up the interview by getting drunk the night before with a Goth undergraduate I’d just met.
I can’t answer it, which is probably why I didn’t get in. I can only say, I hope not.

What do you wish you’d known before starting this novel-writing malarkey?

That I’d be extremely skint for a very long time – you get paid after publication with my publisher. Other than that, nothing has surprised me. I love it and it’s everything I hoped.

What would you advise eager new writers?

I’d say don’t get too bogged down in support groups and writing circles, and don’t worry too much about feedback early on. Too much opinion can kill a book stone dead. Write what you want to write, make it as good as you can. Then show the world.

Writing is fetishised and people get overwrought about it, but you’re just putting words down on paper. You don’t need rituals and hashtags and retreats, you just need to have a story you want to tell. Crack on! Nobody will tell your story for you – unless you’re a celeb with a ghostwriter – so you might as well do it yourself.

• To order Flic’s books on Amazon in all their various forms hit this link
• National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes place every November. It began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days.

Sam Harrington-Lowe

Sam is Silver’s founder and editor-in-chief. She’s largely responsible for organising all the things, but still finds time to do the odd bit of writing. Not enough though. Send help.

The post Meet the novelist: Flic Everett on cats, clichés, and the horror of fantasy appeared first on Silver Magazine.

Our next meet the novelist is Mhairi McFarlane. McFarlane needs little introduction – her catalogue is prolific. Her romantic comedy novels have been critically acclaimed and book, If I Never Met You, is being adapted for screen.

How would you describe yourself?

I would describe myself as a romantic comedy novelist. But if you call me chick lit, I wouldn’t melt down. I quite like the chance then to exceed expectations.

Where do you write?

At home on my pink MacBook Air! Such a cliché… I’m not great with distractions – and there are so many post-internet – so first draft pressure needs quiet and solitude. I can edit in Caffe Nero if I need a change of scene, but I’m 95% own sofa. Boring, I know. I am short of a fabulous nook, and weird baroque routine: “First I must eat two kiwis from my grandmother’s china…”

Read more: Meet the novelist, Pam Howes

Do you take longhand notes or use a keyboard?

Keyboard. Didn’t Quentin Tarantino say he does longhand drafts because “you can’t write poetry on a computer”? It’s a lovely sentiment, but given the job involves deadlines and endless rewriting, you need your work-in-progress to have a delete key.

If you weren’t a romantic comedy novelist, is there another genre you’d like to explore?

Ooh, crime. Detective novels. I love a returning world like Rebus in Edinburgh. I’d definitely end up throwing in a Robin-and-Strike-style slow burn romance though. You can take a girl out of her genre, but you can’t take the genre out of the girl.

Is there anything strange you do to inspire yourself when you’re running on empty?

I’m not sure it qualifies as strange, but I accept social invites, so it looks like the exact opposite of working. I see strangers who become visual blueprints for characters, I have conversations that spark ideas, and if I’m seeing a film or a show, then at some point my mind wanders to my own project. Sometimes what seems to be occupying yourself is freeing you up to roam, mentally. This is my excuse for why you’ll find me in the pub a week before deadline, anyway.

How do you even make yourself sit and finish your work?

Hmm, I am not sure there’s a single answer to this. I swill black coffee and chat online a lot to warm up for writing, but I don’t accept those who’d say it’s a scandalous waste of time. When it comes to something creative, you might only have a few productive hours in you in a day, so it’s about making space for them to happen. My most common tactic when I’m simply not feeling it – for my money this is worse than fooling about – the times when your manuscript seems flat and worthless, and you’re drained of inspiration or belief in it – is to go edit a section that already exists and improve that by increments. My editing brain is way less of a sensitive, mutable diva than my production brain. This, however, depends on having written enough there’s material to edit. You can see why my first drafts crank out pitifully slowly.

How many of your characters are based on real people?

Lots. None. All of them. This is not a contradictory answer. It’s pretty hard to offend me, but the one question that makes my hackles rise is when people think a novel is a Guess Who? game of personalities you’ve encountered in real life. Not only does this imply I can’t do my job and no actual fiction has gone on, but who’s surrounded by a real world cast colourful enough to populate a romantic comedy anyway? Or for any novel for that matter? Sounds improbable and exhausting. It’s up there with “Are all your plots things that have happened to you?” BRIAN, I’VE DONE NINE BOOKS, THINK THAT QUESTION THROUGH!

Tell us more about the myth of simply lifting plots from life…

This mistaken belief that it’s a game of plagiarising reality is why slush piles are full of books of the dreaded “so many funny things happened in my office and all I have to do is write them down” variety. If you try to directly port over people you know or anecdotes you tell to paper, you’ll find they fall flat. Building a story has different needs, so try memoir instead. You draw from life around you constantly, obviously, but for me, every character is a composite. I might rob handy elements here and there, but the whole of them is a fiction. Sometimes they’re pure fantasy.

Can you give an example of a fantasy character?

There’s a boss in my book Who’s That Girl? called Richard. He was simply me trying to write my platonic ideal of a dream boss, and sadly he’s wholly invented! He might have a bit of the Barack Obamas about him, but that’s it.

Do your friends and enemies ever recognise themselves in your books?

Friends, sometimes, enemies, never. Though would they tell me if they did? It’d be what the young people call a self-own, wouldn’t it? “That shocking two faced bitch is clearly ME!” Top tip: you can either hide it from people, or alert anyone you know that it’s them by your choice of the most superficial characteristics. For example, if you want to write about your terrible brother, make him a sister and he won’t see it, no matter how pitiless and accurate the portrait. If you write a doctor and your pal’s a doctor, she will think it’s her, no matter how wildly dissimilar they are. It’s quite comforting and useful, as we novelists need to be able to do distraction thefts and misdirects.

Do you eat and drink while you’re writing?

Ha! I’ve never been asked this! Nothing. I chug pints of black coffee. If I am eating lunch, the screen’s on something else for the duration.

Do you play music when you work or do you prefer silence?

I am absolutely a silence person. My little rat brain cannot cope with multiple channels of information flow at once.

Are there any absolute hard and fast rules you set yourself about your stories or characters?

I once read: “Lie about everything except emotions.” I try to keep that with me. Someone behaving in an unnatural way purely to push the plot forward is a huge no. Never make your characters puppets of the plot. And never shortchange the difficulty of something you’re tackling because it was a device, and you want to get back to the other lighter thing that’s happening. I’ve written about some serious topics in my books and I think readers have always come with me because they can see they’re not there to provide a narrative wrinkle or a topical issue. For example, one of my books features a death and I was adamant to my editor that the loss is there until the very last page, not simply tidied away and moved on from.

Will the internet and people’s shortened attention spans ever mean the end of the novel?

Well, if cinema and television weren’t the end of the novel, why would TikTok be?

What do you wish you’d known before starting this novel-writing malarkey?

Ooh, good question. Do you know, I’m not sure any advice to Younger Me me works, because all I’d do is fret. I could tell her that coming up with the ideas every year is a bastard, but what’s she going to do with that knowledge? I wish I’d enjoyed my debut more. You only get to be new once and I had this vast blank canvas and no risk of repeating myself, but all that was swallowed by the terror and uncertainty.

Any advice for eager new writers?

Write the story that grips your stomach, that keeps you awake at night, that you become obsessed with. Write the book that isn’t there on the bookshop shelves that you want to read. Enthusiasm is a communicable disease.

• To find out more about Mhairi McFarlane’s work, go to mhairimcfarlane.com
• National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes place every November. It began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words in thirty days.

Sam Harrington-Lowe

Sam is Silver’s founder and editor-in-chief. She’s largely responsible for organising all the things, but still finds time to do the odd bit of writing. Not enough though. Send help.

The post Meet the novelist: Mhairi McFarlane on romcoms, real people, and ridiculous questions appeared first on Silver Magazine.

Continuing our series, we meet another exceptional novelist, Sophie Hannah, who reflects on a writing career in which she cannot be pigeonholed.

How would you describe yourself?

I am excessively optimistic, to a Panglossian degree – often almost to the point of delusion – but this is an approach I very much choose on purpose, because I firmly believe that it’s the best way to be, from the point view of having the best life experience – and as a way to maximise the chances of everything going as well as it possibly can!

Where is your perfect place for writing?

The ideal writing spot for me is at home, with a block of five guaranteed interruption-free hours and nobody else in the house, preferably late morning to mid-afternoon. But this literally never happens, so I have to make do with anywhere, any time and under any conditions! The place is definitely less important than the solitude and lack of interruptions.

Do you write by hand or go straight to the keyboard?

The planning stage is always handwritten in a beautiful notebook, and the actual writing of the book happens on my laptop. I absolutely hate sitting at a desk, though. It feels too much like work and makes me shudder, so I sit in an armchair with my feet up on a footstool and my laptop is balanced on a cushion on my knee.

Read more: Meet the queen of ‘domestic noir’, Julia Crouch

Tell us about how you work across different genres

I’m not one for staying in my lane and have branched out into self-help, writing three books in that genre. I wrote the latest, The Double Best Method, after I realised that I had invented the world’s greatest decision-making tool. Yes, really… If you disagree, email me via my website and tell me why! Anyone who struggles to make wise choices, who second guesses their decisions, or beats themselves up when things go wrong, needs my foolproof method in their life.

Sounds like something we could all use. What other lanes do you like to venture into?

I’ve written a murder mystery musical that started life as a school play and is just about to come out as a movie called The Mystery of Mr. E. It premieres in a London cinema on 25 November and will be available to stream on Amazon Prime from that day too. It’s a feel-good, family-friendly musical with catchy songs and a baffling mystery. Twin brothers John and George Danes call themselves The Generalists and they do all kinds of bizarre jobs for all sorts of peculiar people. One day, they get a visit from a mysterious stranger, who says no more than, ‘I am the murderer’ before disappearing. John and George have to find out who this odd man is, and what murder he is referring to. Before they know it, a murder is committed right under their nose. But the strange man who identified himself as the murderer is nowhere to be found…

How do you inspire yourself when you’re running on empty?

I think my strategies are just the standard things that many people do to recharge – rest, holidays, swimming, meditating – nothing out of the ordinary, but all highly effective.

How do you beat the distractions and prevarications that can prevent you from getting your writing done?

I really struggle with this. I can only force myself to work when my self-criticism gets so loud that it’s more painful to avoid writing than it is to write. Luckily, though, I also get obsessed with any story idea that I really love, so once I start work on it, I’m driven to carry on and see it through because I’m determined to make it real.

Do you invent any of your characters or are they based on real people?

I invent most of them! Though obviously they share traits with people I know or have encountered. I think that’s inevitable.

Have any friends or enemies recognised themselves when you’ve written them into a novel?

Yes, but only when the characters could not be more different from them if they tried. Once someone – a bit of a rotter – threatened to sue me because he thought I’d based a character on him. The fictional character was unlike him in every possible way, apart from being a bit of a rotter. Evidently, that was the part he recognised!

Do you eat and drink when you write?

I drink constant, endless cups of tea with milk. Usually Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong.

Do you play music as you work or are you desperate for absolute silence and solitude?

Absolute silence and solitude all the way to the last page.

Are there any absolute hard and fast rules you set yourself about your stories or characters?

My main aim is to grip the reader, which I always try to do with an impossible hook; something that presents a mystery that feels completely unsolvable, even unguessable. I love to create flawed and complex characters, because anything else just isn’t true to life. My characters have to be psychologically interesting. And I’m not interested in transferrable, generic motives such as the killer doing it for the money. I want my motives to be specific to that particular killer, in those particular circumstances, and to have arisen from their unique psyche.

Will the internet and people’s shortened attention spans ever mean the end of the novel?

No, I don’t think so. The more instant online culture becomes, the more it’s going to wear us down and that’ll lead to some people, at least, remembering the joy and the benefits of immersion in something longer and more satisfying. Novels will always have a place in the world and many people will always love and want them.

What do you wish you’d known before starting this novel-writing malarkey?

That one day I was going to be successful. If I could have seen the future, I would have been far less gutted about each of the early fail results I stacked up when I first started trying to get published. I’d have been able to be happy in the moment, no matter what, because I’d have known I was going to achieve my goals. Although the good news for writers just starting out is that you can and should approach the process as though success is guaranteed – it’ll make your dreams much more likely to come true and ensure a contented writing life.

Do you have any advice for new writers?

I found I had so much advice to offer that I became a Master Certified life coach and set up Dream Author Coaching, my online coaching programme that has helped hundreds of writers so far. And it’s not just for new writers. I’ve helped lots of hugely successful and bestselling authors who were suffering from the negative emotional and psychological issues that seem to – but certainly don’t need to – come with the territory. The programme is for anyone who loves writing and who wants to feel happy and energised about their dreams, rather than anxious, frustrated or stressed. Over the four years that I’ve been teaching and coaching, we’ve had some quite staggeringly brilliant results – writers watching their dreams come true in front of their eyes!

• Find out more about Sophie’s coaching programme: dreamauthorcoaching.com. To buy her books and find out more about her work: https://sophiehannah.com/
• National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes place every November. It began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days.

Sam Harrington-Lowe

Sam is Silver’s founder and editor-in-chief. She’s largely responsible for organising all the things, but still finds time to do the odd bit of writing. Not enough though. Send help.

The post Meet the novelist: Sophie Hannah on genre-hopping, and the sound of silence appeared first on Silver Magazine.

Ever thought about writing a novel? They say there’s a book in everyone, but how many of us get that book down on paper? Julia Crouch is the first in our series of interviews where we meet the novelist. And find out more about their writing challenges and habits…

How would you describe yourself?

I’m a novelist, runner, speccy yoga-doer, mother of three grown-up beauties – and I’m soon to be a grandmother. I pot, paint and go for long walks with my dog. I have been married to Tim for 34 years, though I would never call myself a wife. I am – generally – quietly political; a green, lefty, vegetarian feminist. I’m handy, practical and good in a crisis. Oh, and I cook like a bitch.

Where is your most ‘fertile’ zone for writing?

I have a studio at the bottom of my garden, which I bought in a good graphic design year about 20 years ago. It has had many incarnations and for the last decade, it has been my writing studio. I used to do most of my work in there, either at my sit/stand desk or lying on a day bed.

But in the last couple of years, my pottery and painting habit has commandeered half the space, and my writing area is now just the desk corner. Now my nest is empty, I have plenty of nooks around the house where I can write undisturbed. To be honest, most of the actual writing stuff now happens on the front room sofa, surrounded by my two cats and my dog and with the fire and fairy lights lit in the winter.

When you write, are you a longhand merchant, making notes by hand, or do you go straight to the keyboard?

I used to write notes longhand, but now my thumb arthritis makes handwriting painful and ugly. Also, I am a geek, so I love different software writing tools and I touch-type as fast as I think, so it makes sense to work on screen.

I will do note-taking on my phone, either voice notes or dictated. And I plot and plan using Scapple for mind-mapping, Aeon for time-lining – I find knowing when things happen helps with what happens – and Scrivener for drafting. For the arthritis, I dictate notes when I am emailing or marking up manuscripts for my teaching and mentoring work, but there’s some sort of disconnect with my brain for fiction writing.

If you didn’t write in the domestic noir genre, what would you explore instead?

I would like to write women’s/literary fiction, where my writing, characters and themes can breathe without so much plot! Don’t get me wrong, I love plot, but it would be lovely to be able to step back and just write without that particular discipline at the top of the pile of considerations. In fact, for a forthcoming novel, I am aiming to do exactly that.

Read more: Nick Lezard’s fave romantic novels

What’s the strangest thing you do to inspire yourself when you’re running on empty?

Go for a run with Nick Cave playing in my ears, throw a pot, or go and comb the mats out of my dog’s curly hair. I like that better than she does…

How do you overcome any distractions, stop prevaricating, and finish your work?

I use Mac Freedom. This switches the internet off, which really helps. I work in chunks – focusing on word count if drafting, chapters if editing, and time if doing admin and plotting. Mini goals are really important in keeping me focused.

I like to get up and do things like make a cuppa, put the washing on the line or get the supper prepped. Activities like that provide punctuation and, even if I don’t get far with my writing for the day, I’m making progress with other things around me.

How many of your characters are based on real people?

I invent all of them, but they are Frankenstein’s monsters, cobbled together from real people I know. But the characters come to me almost fully formed, which I always find weird. Very early on, I know them. They develop as I think about the story – their function grows with their form.

Character is plot, plot is character, said F Scott Fitzgerald. And I think about what relationship I want the reader to have with them. I trained and worked in theatre for the first 10 years of my working life, so I do think, for me, that creating characters is a bit like the work an actor does. It’s a sort-of inhabiting.

Has anyone ever recognised themselves in any of your novels?

My second novel, Every Vow You Break, is about an English family spending a summer in Upstate New York, while the husband, an actor, plays the lead in a Shakespeare. Every other year for about a decade my own English family did exactly that and it was an absolutely wonderful thing for all of us to do.

I made very sure that the husband – Marcus, who is the worst kind of male actor – very clearly has a fine, thick head of hair. Tim, my own actor husband is completely bald, so there can’t possibly be any similarity. A friend spotted her house once – I do tend to steal houses and settings more than characters.

Do you eat and drink while you write?

I’ve never been asked that before! Always a big mug of tea to hand, after my three morning mugs of coffee. I don’t like to eat because I can’t bear a sticky keyboard and I’m a mucky eater. Even in my drinking days – four years sober, dib dib – I never followed Hemingway’s exhortation to write drunk. Although on a couple of National Novel Writing Months, of which I have completed four, I would have only the end of the day and perhaps a bottle of wine down my throat to write my 1,700 words. Sometimes the results were interesting…

Does playing music help you write?

Yes, but it can’t have words. Regulars for me are Philip Glass, Bach and Handel’s piano music, Max Richter, Dirty Three, and film scores by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.

Are there any hard and fast rules you set yourself about your stories or characters?

No coincidences. I think that’s it. Oh, and I like Chekhov’s thing about the gun. He said, “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” I love planting things.

Will the internet and people’s shortened attention spans ever mean the end of the novel?

Sorry, did you say something?

Ha, very funny…

I have a feeling that, just as people are wanting less mass-produced shit in their lives, real books are going to become more popular than ever. People have enormous attention spans for long form TV and stupidly long movies – I’m looking atcha, Scorcese. The low-tech activity of curling up with your cat, a cuppa, and a good, beautifully produced novel is quite alluring in this fast-paced world. It’s certainly Instagrammable!

What do you wish you’d known before starting this novel-writing malarkey?

It’s a good idea to talk an idea over with your editor and/or agent and/or writing best buddy and get the story sorted before spending two years writing it. And if that sounds horribly specific, it’s because it is.

What is your advice for eager new writers?

Enjoy yourself. Read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. Work at the craft – read like a writer, fall in love with grammar, sort out your relationship with adverbs. But be bold with your writing and your ideas. Know the rules and know that there are no rules.

• To find out more about Julia Crouch’s work and to order her books, go to juliacrouch.co.uk
• National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes place every November. It began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days.

Sam Harrington-Lowe

Sam is Silver’s founder and editor-in-chief. She’s largely responsible for organising all the things, but still finds time to do the odd bit of writing. Not enough though. Send help.

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