Sarah Hall
Sarah Hall
breaks good looking system
The short story is very good at looking at shadow psychologies and how the system breaks down underneath.
bland characters fiction lacking landscapes seemed whose
There was a lot of fiction I did not enjoy, whose landscapes seemed bland and unevocative, the characters faint-hearted within them, the very words lacking vibrancy.
promoting quite required terms work writers
Quite a lot is required of writers these days in terms of, if not promoting the work, then being a representative of the work. It's a difficult thing, really.
best library special
The Special Collections Library is the best we have. They have such fascinating things in there.
brought close interested main park since wildlife
I've always been interested in wolves, since I was a child. There was a wolf enclosure in a wildlife park very close to where I was brought up; they were the main attraction.
michael novels various
Various books revolutionised what I think about novels and showed me that they're not strict, formulaic things. 'Coming Through Slaughter' by Michael Ondaatje was one of them.
atlantic terror
There's nothing like the vast, dark Atlantic to remind you of your mortality. But terror can also be exhilarating.
hope human reader somebody surprise work
You always hope you'll surprise somebody with the work. If you write something human and appealing, the perfect reader could be anyone.
anywhere brought child fighting girls mesmerized north remember
I was brought up in the north of England, which is probably no rougher than anywhere else, but I remember as a child being kind of mesmerized by girls fighting on the playground.
finding narrative piece tend
I tend to research as I write so that the narrative can take priority, which is important for a piece of fiction, I think, finding out facts as and when I need to.
course novel studied
I studied the short story as part of my creative writing course at university but then set off as a novelist. Generally, there is a sense that even if you want to write short stories, you need to do a novel first.
express felt head spent time
I can gabble on now, but I couldn't when I was a kid, so I spent a lot of time in my own head on the moors by myself. It felt like writing was the right way to express myself.
along pirates raft variety
I was the feral, mud-bathing, tree-climbing variety of child. Why would I want to read about pirates when I could build a raft and terrorise sheep along the riverbanks?
means motivated paying sensible
I have ideas. I hear voices. Words accumulate. It's still an overriding impulse. And I'm self-employed, which means I have to be sensible and motivated about paying the bills.