Catherine Pate in the Hot Seat

Catherine Pate lives, works and writes in London, UK.

FE: What inspires you to write?
CP: I think my best work has been inspired by personal experience – it’s sometimes easier to get under the skin of a situation if you’ve actually been in it. I’m also fascinated by the dark places in my imagination, which don’t have any outlet in real life, and that inspires me to write, so I can sort of ‘act out’. Recently I’ve been inspired by observing people who don’t know they’re being watched, not in a stalkerish way (!), but it’s really interesting to see what people do when they’re not interacting with anyone and to imagine what they might be thinking about, or where they’re going, or what their life is like.

FE: What gets in the way of your writing?
CP: The ‘select-all/delete’ function on my computer! I have a tendency to be overly self-critical and to compare myself to all the good writers that I read, which is not a good thing. I know the best way to write is just to, well, WRITE, so I’ve been endeavouring to do that more – to get it out of my head, then prune later. 

FE: Which of your pieces are you most proud of and why?
CP: I wrote a poem for someone that really summed up an intense and hugely romantic week we’d had together. It was a gift, but the process of rationalising my thoughts was therapeutic too, and for once I was very satisfied when I read it back. The recipient of the poem told me recently that they intended to write the words into a song- it made me really happy to think that they had a life beyond the one I’d given them.

FE: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given as an aspiring writer?
CP: It was a technical comment – write what you observe about your characters and let the reader do the work to figure out what that means. For example, “beads of sweat were visibly forming on his forehead and he glanced rapidly from side to side” is so much better than “he sat there looking nervous and suspicious”. 

FE: How do you deal with writers’ block?
CP: I’ve very often suffered from writers’ block owing to the fact that I’m too critical about my own work. Recently I addressed it by starting a journal, and hand-writing letters. It’s a great discipline because you have to get out what you want to say in one go, and can’t delete things like you can on a computer. And the act of regular writing has got me into the habit, so that now when I attempt fiction or poetry, the words flow more easily.

What do I know anyway?

The 'What do I know Anyway?' section (located towards the bottom of the write hand column) is here for the purpose of sharing the ups and downs of a new writer.

I started writing casually around 1999 as a creative outlet. I'd always painted until then but found words easier and more rewarding to shift around on paper. I abandoned my first attempt at a book in 2002 after writing about 200 pages which I thought were pretty good. I sent it out to about 20 publishers and received 3 rejections and a lot of silence.

Over the next years I took some writing courses, joined a writing club, built up a network of readers to give me constructive feedback and learned how to critique others' work. I would also say that I learned how to read properly; to really notice what was being said and how the author constructed characters, events and drama. During that time I became enamoured with the short story, reading as many as I could and writing about 5 myself. I also wrote a screenplay and another novel- which for the sake of argument we will call my first novel. The only thing I ever tried to get published during that time was non-fiction pieces in local publications- articles, interviews and reviews.

By the time I started on my second novel in 2005 I was starting to feel like I might possibly-one day be...gulp... a writer. I couldn't not write.

I approached my second book in a totally different fashion- I felt equipped, like I knew what I needed to do to make this work. Starting it's life as two different short stories, the characters grew and started to feel like friends- the events and people were with me for the entire 3 years that it took me to write it. During this time I also worked a full time professional job, renovated an apartment and had a couple of children. I'm not trying to show-off or anything, just point out that real people with real lives can still write- it just takes time.

In January 2009 I decided that I would start trying to find an agent. That brings us up to date with the launch of the Fiction Exchange and if you're interested, you can find other random incidents from my writing career in this section- posted as they occur.

Catherine O'Flynn in the Hot Seat

Catherine O’Flynn is based in Birmingham, England. Her first novel, ‘What was Lost’ was published in 2007 and her second novel is due out in 2010.

FE: How did you get your first novel published?
CO: I sent it out to about fifteen agents in a fairly clueless way. I just went for ones that accepted unsolicited manuscripts (it never occurred to me that I should approach others and try and get my manuscript solicited) and got back either no response at all or a generic rejection letter that gave no indication the ms had been read. I suppose I wasn't that surprised really - I knew the odds against me were enormous and I've never been much of an optimist so I kind of assumed rejection would be the inevitable outcome. Eventually though a friend recommended an agency to me and I sent it to them and they liked it - something which still to this day is probably the single most miraculous piece of news I received. My agent worked with me on the book - suggesting some work that needed doing on the ms. When it was ready she sent it out to four major publishers all of whom rejected it. The main problem seemed to be that it didn't fit in with any clear genre and wouldn't be easy to 'place' in the market. We opted then to go for a small independent publisher (Tindal Street Press), as we thought they might be more risk taking and see beyond genre. This turned out to be true and they put everything they had behind the book.

FE: Why do you write?
CO: I think it's usually just to get to the bottom of something that's niggling at me. With What Was Lost I wanted to answer the basic question 'What was it about the shopping centre where I worked that so got under my skin?' Writing is a way of exploring my thoughts and understanding how I feel about things.

FE: What’s your greatest challenge with writing?
CO: I suppose the challenge is coming up with a story that allows me to do the exploring mentioned above. I think coming up with a story that isn't too big and isn't too little is something that takes up a lot of my time.

FE: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
CO: Oh God - probably that they should disregard advice from novelists keen to dispense it. The only thing I can think of is to write because you enjoy it or find it helpful in some way. You have no control over publication, but if you get something out of it for yourself then whether you are published or not is not the most important thing.

FE: What are you currently working on?
CO: I'm working on what I hope is the final draft of my second novel. I haven't developed a snappy description of it yet. Its theme I suppose is ageing - both of people and of cities. The main character is a superficially corny local tv news presenter who is haunted by disappearances and the stories that never make the news. It's about town planning and brutalist architecture as well. It sounds terrible doesn't it? I will never make a blurb writer.

More about Catherine

More about What was Lost