Q: What does your writing day look like?
A: I wake up at 9.29am and am immediately late for everything. I spend the working day doing absolutely anything except writing – either my job, or, if it’s the weekend, a series of tasks, chores and treats to fill my time. Sometimes, when I’m running low on tasks, chores and treats, I will decide to e.g. read Moby-Dick, Anna Karenina or Ulysses. As the evening draws in I begin asking my partner inane questions, e.g., what if you were a cat and I were a cat but we were enemy cats with overlapping territories, do
you think you would still love me? Yes darling, he says, so I have to find a new inane question. We will either go out – thus making it SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE for me to do any writing, tant pis – or we will stay in, so I will have to read more Ulysses or whatever. At around 9pm, with much groaning and lamenting, I will lugubriously drag myself to my computer and open up a document (at the moment, the one I’m working on is called
lighthousekeeping.docx, and is not about lighthouse keeping). I will read the last paragraph I’ve written, and either drop dead of shame or think, “Okay, I know what comes next.” Then, perhaps an hour, an hour and a half of the most sublime feeling in the world: the words just come, the story just flows. I am a genius, I think, James Joyce eat your heart out, I will not be attempting to read Ulysses tomorrow, this is the only thing I love doing, I can’t wait to do it again. Once the fugue state clears, I read back what I’ve written, I think, Oh I’m God’s greatest clown, this is all horrible, I’ll never write again. Then I go to bed. The next morning, I wake up at 9.29am,
etc.
Q: Time travel can be particularly difficult to write, how
do you keep track of timelines, the eras every character is from etc.?
A: Well, for this book, I cheated. Although it’s ostensibly about time-travel, with the exception of Graham Gore’s expatriation to the 21st century, no actual time-travel takes place on the page. I wasn’t all that interested in time-travel qua time-travel – I was more curious about the notion of history as a narrative which informs national and cultural identity, the ways that might be manipulated by a government who literally controls the
narrative, and what you do when you’re confronted by a figure from history whose ideals conflict (or mesh) with your own.
I was reluctant to give time-travel too much power in the book, because it’s the choices people make and the responsibilities they are willing to shoulder that will make a serious difference to our future. There are some characters who want to use time-travel to manipulate future outcomes, but, without spoilers, I would say it doesn’t really go all that well for them…
Q: You provide in the afterword a bit about why you chose Graham Gore as figure to feature in your book. Were any of the other characters historical figures you came across while planning the book, or where they more
‘organically’ formed?
A: All of the other characters are completely fictional! For Margaret Kemble (1665, Great Plague of London) and Arthur Reginald-Smyth (1916, Battle of the Somme) specifically, I chose eras or events that loom large in the British cultural imagination. They are representatives of ‘turning-point’ moments in our history – and yet, they completely defy expectations and represent nothing but themselves.
Q: Open endings with books can be great for readers to discuss & debate ‘what happens next’ but was there any particular reason why you chose this kind of ending? (If you feel this is a spoiler in any way feel free to omit).
A: I would say half of the reason is that I didn’t want an ending with a foregone conclusion. Our future is still mutable, changeable and even hopeful – in spite of the climate crisis – and I hope that signalling the possibility of a continued narrative also signals that there is so much potential for change, both for the bridge and in the broader narrative
of our future.
The other half of the reason is that I originally wrote the story to amuse some friends. I had no particular plans to stop writing and could have cheerfully carried on. That plan changed once I worked on The Ministry of Time as a proper novel, of course!
Q: Production companies are lining up for the film rights. Who do you envision playing the Bridge and Graham Gore?
A: I have genuinely no idea! I’ve only ever imagined Graham Gore as, well, the actual historical Graham Gore. A young Elliot Gould might have been good, but you’d have to go back in time to nab him off the set of The Long Goodbye and, as we know, time-travel only ever causes problems. For the bridge, I have even fewer ideas. I hope, if a screen adaptation comes to pass, it will be an opportunity to find new talent. I can’t think of many actors of Cambodian heritage – Bérénice Marlohe and Élodie Yung are the two who
spring to mind – so I’d love to see more!