Multi-award-winning author Sarah Waters talks to Andi Chapman about her day-to-day life as a writer and how her life as an academic feeds into her writing.
'My routine consists of getting up at about 9 a.m. and then, because I work at home, I can begin at 9.30. I start by checking my e-mails, and then review the writing I did the day before – I usually leave myself in the middle of a scene and I aim to write about 1000 words a day. My best time tends to be the afternoon when I peak.
'If I do stop, I have always got ongoing research to be getting on with. I love the research; writing can be marvellous, but it can be torture as well – regular times of feeling that I am just not getting anywhere at all. I never write at weekends or after dark, and Monday’s are always awful; I am always horribly depressed on a Monday and have to say to myself ‘look, it’s just a Monday and it’s always like this’. Tuesday is much better and by Thursday it’s great.
'I take breaks during the day. By just walking to the shop, I usually have more ideas in those twenty minutes than I do for the rest of the day. I keep all of these ideas on my computer, and then as long as I have logged them somewhere I know I can come back to them.
Research discipline
'I spend two or three months researching a book. I’ll go to the British Library in London and can have up to twenty books that I am continually dipping into whilst I am actually writing. My PhD gave me a fantastic discipline in this respect and an enormous confidence about using words. I just love putting them together in a logical way and I think that the more mastery, as a writer, one has over the language, the better. I see words as the tools of my trade and I think that it is important not to feel daunted by language. I am always resolving to buy Common English Usage and have often thought that it is a shame I haven’t attended a writing course; I would quite enjoy being given things to write outside of the novel – I’ve never even written a short story because I am so novel focused.
Moving on
‘Writing a novel set in the 1940s, The Night Watch, was a real challenge since it meant giving up the 19th century. But I feel much more grown up now that I’ve written a book that’s just about relationships. I felt that until I wrote a book that was just about relationships and made it interesting, I somehow wouldn’t be a proper writer. One source of inspiration was a book I read by Bryher, the lover of a lesbian writer called H. D. (Hilda Doolittle). Days of Mars is an account of London during World War II and its description of the city, the physical openness of it all, exposing traces of earlier periods - this is where my novel starts.
Small details of life
'Whilst I’m writing, I am constantly thinking about the small and intricate details of people’s ordinary lives. Aside from the research I do, I collect old postcards. I love the messages on the backs of them – 'I’ll see you tomorrow at 2 o’clock and I hope your cold is better'. They can seem very very humdrum and yet achingly ephemeral and poignant. I love the continuity of feeling across the decades. I’m very preoccupied with the small details of life and the small failures of people’s lives and frustrations.
Useful criticism
'Some days I will talk to my friend and ‘reader’ who is the person who always sees my writing first. She has written a novel herself, and has read my work for me from the very beginning. She lets me know whether something is working or not and she can be quite frank. At one time I belonged to a writing group and read the whole of Affinity with them before it was published. Their criticism was enormously useful; it was just great to have so many different sources of feedback.
Reading
'I’ve always read a lot in my spare time. Lesbian authors who made a big impression on me in the ’80s included Ellen Galford, Anna Livia, Paula Martinac, and Sarah Dreher, who wrote the Stoner Mac Tavish lesbian detective novels. Jeanette Winterson, too, of course, had a big impact. She was writing really good quality literature with a lesbian theme to it way back and there are more writers doing just that now.
Getting an agent
'When I finished Tipping the Velvet, I sent it off to about ten publishers and they sent it straight back. The fact that I had some academic work already published was no help at all. A friend told me about a woman who was starting up as an agent and she gave me her number and I got a publisher through her. It is often these tenuous connections that are the most helpful. My agent tends to publish a lot of ‘chick lit’ and more commercial fiction although the agency she belongs to works with Michael Frayn and P D James. She liked my novel and thought she could place it.
From lesbian to mainstream market
'I am delighted that people find my books worth reading and that they have gone mainstream. I originally thought that I might have just a niche in the lesbian market, so I am delighted mainstream audiences find my books interesting too. The idea that I might be some sort of lesbian icon, however, makes me rather uncomfortable. When I was coming out in the late 80s, there was a lot of lesbian fiction around but I had a sense that I could write something slightly different – a new kind of historical novel. I took the chance, intentionally anachronistic, to pinch for women the material I had gleaned about the male, upper middle class homosexual circles of the 1890s and their encounters with ‘rough trade’. I worry that there might be limits to the market, but ultimately I can only write the books I feel interested in and passionate about.
Fame
'As far as my increased visibility goes, it hasn’t been that difficult. I can always opt out of anything I don’t want to do, and whatever kind of event I do there is always a lesbian element to the audience, and that is really nice to have – it makes all the difference really. I have never had ambitions to attend loads of writers’ parties, though I do have a few writers as friends. Most of my circles, though, aren’t writers. I just dip into the writing scene now and then. I keep my feet on the ground that way. I still remember what it was like to be trying to get an agent and a publisher – how disheartening it felt, to keep getting rejections. But it was worth it in the end! You’ve just got to keep at it. If you feel passionate about your own work, your passion will win through.’
