Who is Mary Hamer and when did you decide to become a writer?
It probably began when my parents gave me a fountain pen for Christmas, the year I was six. I used it to underline the thrilling word ‘fainted’ in The Wind in the Willows! Of course I could tell you about my education: that I went to a Birmingham convent school, then to Oxford to read English. But that wouldn’t reveal all the silent rebellion that was going on underneath. I don’t think I knew about that myself till I was very much older. By then I’d spent twenty years teaching and writing in the university and had taken on the deadening voice of authority. Theatre training in the US helped me begin to find my own voice as a writer and to tap into my own feelings and experience. At last, that felt like real writing.
What inspired you to write Kipling and Trix?
Meeting Kipling’s stories as a child, I was released into a wider more exciting world. I loved him for that and felt a connection with him, all through my growing up. I wanted to write about him for my PhD, but my supervisors discouraged it. By the time I came back to him, determined, by then, I was interested in the long-term psychological effects on children of separation from their parents and prolonged exposure to fear, such as Ruddy and Trix Kipling suffered when they were small. Did that damaging early experience play out in their later lives, I wondered? And so I plunged into research. At that point I’d never written a word of fiction.
Tell us more about Kipling and Trix?
Kipling & Trix tells the story of a famous brother and a little-known sister, both writers. Having spent years researching their lives, instead of biography, I decided that only fiction could do justice to this remarkable pair. Following the facts of their lives very closely, I join up the dots, as it were, to make emotional sense of them. Starting with an account of their childhood, I go on to link that unhappy time with their later struggles for love and for success as writers.
How did you feel about winning the Virginia Prize for Fiction 2011 and please tell us more about the award?
When I got the email telling me I’d won the Virginia Prize for Fiction I simply could not believe it at first. It had been such a struggle, I must have had at least thirty rejections from agents and publishers, so I’d grimly hunkered down to sending the book out yet again. All at once that was over. I was euphoric.
Aurora Metro, a small independent publishing house, created the prize in 2009 to encourage and promote new writing by women. The award means £1000 plus publication. It’s open to any woman over 18 who’s written an unpublished novel in English. I love it that they gave Woolf’s name to the prize: she is such an inspiration, I feel honoured to have this tiny link with her. Aurora have a link too: Woolf’s first novel was completed and published in Richmond, where they’re also based.
What was your experience of switching from non-fiction to fiction?
It was terrifying! But also freeing. I started by writing scenes, conversations, dialogue, almost at random, certainly not in sequence: I wanted my imagination, not logical thinking, to govern my choices and I was afraid I’d impose a rational order from habit. I knew that reason and reflection would have to come in but I thought I’d better just sort of play, at first. Once I’d found a writers’ group, then I had teachers, women who published fiction themselves, who supported my writing while helping me to improve it. I must say that working with Aurora has been a revelation: the writer is so much more closely involved. Presses I’ve worked with before seemed to have little idea about marketing and promotion but Aurora are really on the ball. It makes a huge difference.
What advice would you give to new and unpublished writers?
Avoid isolation. Find the support of a writing community. Get other writers whose judgment and human decency—this is important, or you could just be fodder for their vanity— you respect to give you feedback. Keep sending the work out. Keep the whole activity of writing as playful and pleasureable for yourself as you can.
How important are initiatives such as Brit Writers?
It’s wonderful that organisations and companies like Brit Writers that encourage writers to develop their work have come into being. They offer a sense of community, pointers and sometimes pathways towards getting out there.
What’s next for Mary?
What’s next? Another experiment, I think but this time one that’s rather more modest! Since I find I write naturally in scenes, units that are brief, I’m thinking about a short story.
Is there anything else you’d like to say to anyone reading this right now?
What do you want your readers to get out of your work? Don’t forget the reader. Thank you for being my reader today and good luck!
Thank you Mary.
Brit Writers
Facebook
Twitter
wow you are so lucky to have an interview with her. Its my first time hearing about her book and I will try and read about it :). Thanks for sharing this to us.
ReplyDelete