A Room With A View in A Room Of One’s Own
It’s great to be taking over the Better Reading Facebook page, and thanks to Cheryl Akle and Todd Alexander for daring to have me for two days. As I sit typing, what do I see out my window? The trees turning yellow, their skeleton branches growing clearer every day. A patch of sky, grey just now. No. When I wrote The Lost Swimmer, I’d see windswept Victorian beaches, Athens, Crete, the Amalfi Coast. And sometimes the Grand Canal of Venice. I work from memory, but also from photos that I’ve taken over the years (here are a couple).
And now I’m writing Out of the Ice, I see penguins and whales and Antarctica, my hands flying over the keyboard, my eyes averted away from the screen as I picture where my protagonist is travelling and put words to the images.
As I get up for a coffee, I’m back with my own view, in my own room. E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf are two of my favourite writers. And Scout coming to terms with the ugly world of adults in To Kill A Mockingbird is my greatest inspiration. I totally agree with Cheryl Akle that To Kill A Mockingbird could bring the most lapsed reader back to books. And now a lifetime of reading is influencing my own stories. I’d love to hear what books influence you in your life. See you at Better Reading Facebook.