Interview: Christopher Wakling

Christopher Wakling is the author of several books, including his most recent critically acclaimed novel What I Did. He was a guest at the Firestation Book Swap in January and is now making himself comfortable on my blog. I am too nice to him.

SP: Right then sunshine, here are some Qs for you to A.

CW: Sunshine?  Do you know who I am?

SP: So, how did you find the Book Swap (and I know you have to be nice about it but feel free to be sarcastic if you want to)?

CW: SatNav.  No, no.  I was nervous before Book Swap.  I’ve had enough experience answering  ‘where do you get your ideas from’ questions at readings to be confident of my scintillating responses to them, but I knew Book Swap would cut through the author-with-a-capital-A stuff, and the evening didn’t disappoint.  Blinking in the spotlights, alternately blindsided and skewered by questions both frivolous and probing, I ended up confessing to culinary barbarism (my lunch often consists of baked beans eaten straight from the tin), a poor understanding of old wives’ tales (apparently you can swim straight after eating your horse while leading it to water), and a childhood propensity for vandalism (I’m not about to repeat the same actionable mistake with detail here).  Beyond that, I was struck by the conviviality of Book Swap.  Its irreverence is cut with warmth, and cake.

SP: For those socially inept individuals who didn't come to see you at the Book Swap, could you tell us about your new novel in a few sentences?

CW: A child runs into a road.  His father smacks him.  A passer-by objects.  That’s where the story starts.  But I’m afraid I’m going to take one further, longer sentence to emphasize that the novel is about more than the boundary between the state and the family, or whether smacking is ever justified, because the whole story is told by Billy, the six-year-old in question, which makes the heart of the novel an exploration of childhood, parenthood, and family, from a child’s point of view; Billy is a Fool, inadvertently spilling truths despite his limited understanding of what’s going on.

SP: We talked a bit on the night about The Slap, which appears to have a similar concept at first glance. Does this really get on your tits?

CW: Yes.  Aside from the plot-kicking premise, the two books are about as similar as two very dissimilar things.  Granted, they’re both made out of words.  But roast beef and fish pie are both made out of food, and though you might eat either for lunch if you’d run out of baked beans, you wouldn’t say they are the same thing AT ALL.  Sadly, I enjoyed The Slap, so it’s hard for me to savage it.  But I’ll have a go.  There’s a lot of mean sex in that baggy excuse for a novel. What I Did, by contrast, has a heart of solid gold, never mind that it will teach you how not to teach a kid how to ride a bike.

SP: I love the utterly convincing voice that you have given Billy in the book, where did that come from?

CW: I have young children.  I looked after them a lot when they were small (still do). The experience was, by turns, joyous and boring as hell.  To counter the latter problem, I did what every writer should do: I took notes, lots of notes.  This occasionally gave me the appearance of a hack journalist trailing miniature dictators in the playground.  But it was useful.  I wrote down what my kids said and did, and, most un-journalistically, I guessed at what that meant they might be thinking and wrote that down, too.  After a while a voice emerged, full of misunderstanding, moments of clarity, jump-cuts, dog-legs, staccato bursts of nonsense and run on irrelevances.  Once I had that I just needed a story.

SP: And if someone has read What I Did and really enjoyed it, which of your earlier books would you suggest they try next? And why?

CW: Hmm, a ‘rescue one of your kids from the burning house’ question.  If a reader has enjoyed WHAT I DID because of what it says about parenthood, then I’d perhaps recommend they read The Undertow, which is a different take on a similar subject.  It’s about a father investigating an accident involving his grown-up daughter, and it asks the question ‘how much should a parent know about their child?’  But maybe this keen reader is all parenthooded out.  In which case The Devil's Mask, a mystery set in the aftermath of the abolition of the slave trade, might be the better bet.  It’s about as far away in tone and content from WHAT I DID as it is possible to get, but there’s a similar theme at its heart.  I’m not going to say what that theme is.

SP: Are you a full-time writer or do you have a paper round or something to make ends meet?

CW: I’m pretty much full time, in that I don’t have another job that isn’t to do with writing.  When I’m not working on a novel I contribute travel journalism to The Independent, and I teach creative writing for Curtis Brown Creative, The Faber Academy, and The Arvon Foundation from time to time, too.  I’m also a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Bristol University, which sounds grand, and is.

SP: Do you have any advice for writers who have yet to be published? Any nuggets of wisdom?

CW: One nugget?  Practise.  If that sounds a bit obvious, I have a whole Go Large McBucket of Nuggets I’ll happily share in person: perhaps come along to one of the courses run by the outfits I mentioned above.

SP: And about the mechanics of writing - are you a laptop man? longhand? typewriter? dictating to a menial?

CW: Every morning I sit down at my desk, bite the end off a finger, and slash down words in hot blood.  Then I type them up on a laptop.  And if I get stuck, or the bastard internet intrudes, I find a quiet corner and write with a pencil in a notebook.

SP: I was kind enough to introduce you to the music of Agnes Obel (no problem, you are very welcome), what music would you recommend to me in return?

CW: Jonathan Wilson’s album Gentle Spirit.  Specifically, the song ‘Desert Raven’, which is monumental.  I’ll send you an invoice.

SP: And what book would you recommend to the attractive bunch who read my blog?

Do they like dogs?  If so, White Fang, by Jack London.  I hadn’t read it since I was a child, but found myself opening it up the other day and finishing it the next.  A stunning piece of nature writing, with added dogfights.

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I have included links to Chris' books above and you should check out his website if you get a chance.

Comments

[Ellie]

After reading this, I feel the need to feed him some vegetables, other than beans.