This week's TT Test is taken by Sarah Waters
[link] one of Britain's best loved novelists. Her first novel 'Tipping the Velvet' marked the arrival of a writer who has the rare gift of creating popular & critically acclaimed fiction - much of her work has been adapted for television & film and 'Fingersmith', 'The Night watch' and 'The Little Stranger' have all been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for fiction. With so many accolades her modesty is refreshing. Her answers are great too :)
What is your wake up song at the moment ? The last CD I bought was The Resistance, by Muse, and the track I keep playing from it is Uprising.I listen to music mainly when I'm walking through London, and Uprising is a great track to go striding across the city to; it's got revolutionary lyrics, a thumping beat, and makes you feel like Rosa Luxemburg. I do love Muse. Their music is camp and epic at the same time - quite an achievement. I'm longing to go to a Muse concert, but I'm too embarrassed: it would be me and ten thousand teenage boys.
Which work of art or single event has most influenced you in your chosen profession ? There are a few authors whose work really inspired me to start writing - most notably Angela Carter, Philippa Gregory and Jeannette Winterson. In very different ways their books have taken on history, tradition, the canon; they've teased new stories out of the past, or invented new, fantasy histories if they didn't like the ones already on offer - I suppose that's what I've tried to do, too. But the single biggest influence on me probably came from a novel called
Street Lavender, by Chris Hunt. It's the adventures of a rent boy in late Victorian London - a shamelessly rompy, sexy, romantic story, but a really intelligent one, too. It was published by Gay Men's Press in the mid 1990s: I read it and thought, 'Wow! This is brilliant!'
Tipping the Velvet was really my attempt to do something similar, for lesbians.
If you could travel back in time, which period would you most like to visit and why? I've written so much about the Victorians that I guess I'd have to choose the nineteenth century. I'd love just to be able to eavesdrop on a few ordinary conversations, on the street and in people's homes. As a researcher, ordinary domestic and emotional life is the hardest thing to get hold of, because it tends not to find its way into the history books. But it's what fascinates me most about the past: the mundane details of people's lives; how they thought about their bodies; what they dreamt about; what satisfied and disappointed and frustrated them.
I love eating out and discovering new restaurants, can you please recommend one to me ? To be honest, I'm not at a big restaurant goer. I find food and eating and all that a bit tiresome. My ideal restaurant is one that's cheap and quick, but with a bit of personality - somewhere like the India Club
[link], on the second floor of the Strand Continental Hotel, London. It's a wonderfully quirky place where the food's all right, service is sometimes huffy, but you can slope off afterwards to a cinema, a theatre or the South Bank.
What is the best advice you ever been given relating to your professional/ creative life ? When I was struggling with an early draft of
Tipping the Velvet, my friend Sally, to console me, said, 'But Sarah, you were never going to get it right first time. It would be a
miracle if you got it right first time!' I've always remembered that - and I think of it, particularly, when my writing feels stuck, or the words on the screen before me look more than usually awful. Yes, it would be a miracle if you sat down at your desk and wrote, straight off, a perfectly finished novel. But by plugging patiently away at it, by being ready to edit and re-draft, you can make it better.
BONUS QUESTION : Is there any truth to the rumour that 'Tipping The Velvet' is being adapted into a stage musical? Can you tell us any more details about this ?! There is indeed some truth to it... But I'm afraid I can't say any more right now, because the project is still in its very earliest days. It's a great idea, though, isn't it?
Tipping is such a theatrical book. I'd love to see it bounce into life on the stage.
This week's TT Test is taken by the great American singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier [link]. Her songs have been covered by many artists including Tim McGraw & Candi Staton & her albums have all been highly praised culminating in the masterpiece 'The Foundling' which tells her own story of being abandoned as a child,the struggle for her own identity & birth mother & ultimately the triumph of love. What is your wake up song at the moment ? 'Lorraine', by my dear friend Lori McKenna. Which work of art or single event has most influenced you in your chosen profession? I got sober from drugs and alcohol in 1999, and songwriting followed. I would never have become a songwriter without recovery from from my addictions. If you could travel back in time, which period would you most like to visit and why ? I'd go back 40-50 years in Nashville, to the time when the songs coming out of this town were great, and I'd hang out with the my songwriting hero's when they were in their prime... Harlan Howard, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Marijohn Wilkin, johnny Cash, Tom T Hall et al. I'd find my way into their scenes, and they'd make me a better writer just from being around them. I love eating out & discovering new restaurants,can you please recommend one to me ? Margot's Cafe [link], in Nashville,TN. My favorite restaurant of all time, The chef is the owner, and she is in the kitchen every night cooking fresh local ingredients with passion and love. No one can cook fish like Margot, and she changes the menu every day to reflect what's fresh in the market. I am a huge fan. What is the best advice you ever been given relating to your professional /creative life ? Unless they are giving you a big check, don't sign anything. BONUS QUESTION: I am intrigued that you also teach songwriting - what sort of guidance are students looking for ? And what is it that you try to bring out of them? I teach songwriters to look for their own voice, and look inside themselves for the truth of what they are trying to say. I can teach the craft (song structure, chord progressions, rhyming patterns) but I can't teach the art, the art being the subjects which the writer is called to write about. I try to teach the students to listen to the voices in their heads and hearts, and reveal what's being said in there. I try to teach them to allow themselves to be vulnerable, and expose their hearts. I try to teach them that songwriting is more about re-writing than anything. and most of all, I try to teach them to connect with themselves and their listeners. I let them know that if they are not connecting, it's not the listeners fault. Basically, I give them a ladder, show them the rungs... and it's up to them to do the climbing.
