The Monthly interviews author Angeline King – Part 2 – Developing a process for writing novels

When you started writing seriously, what was the process you followed?

My “year out” began in January 2015. I would take the kids to school around 9 o’clock and then run back down the road to begin writing Snugville Street. I had to pick up one of the children from nursery at 11.30am, so it was an intensive two and a quarter hours. (I actually think I achieved more in that limited slot than I do today). I was anxious to get as much done as I could because I was preparing to go back into full-time employment. Snugville Street was my third novel, but it was the first one I published. I self-published in September 2015 because I genuinely believed this was a one-off year out.

How did you develop your craft?

I’d always studied literature, and I think studying French novels gave me an opportunity to explore the craft from a different angle. So, reading and studying was step one of the apprenticeship.

The next step was trial and error. I wrote two novels without a manual and then hired a professional writer to assess one of the manuscripts. That was a very emotional experience. I’m not much of a crier, but I cried.

I read some books about creative writing, which I found very dull, and I did the odd course. By the time I wrote Snugville Street in 2015, I was in a good position to craft a novel. One thing I found easy was establishing the Point of View, but I’m sure I also made many mistakes.

What about influences?

As a young teenager, it was all about Joan Lingard and Adrian Mole, but I soon became a big fan of the classics; Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Good dialogue and good dialect are key. Among my favourite French novels are Voyage au bout de la nuit by Céline, and Émile Zola’s Germinal, which is echoed, alongside Dicken’s Great Expectations in intertextual references in Snugville Street.

In my thirties, I wanted to be Victoria Hislop, who is famous for writing about the Greek Islands. I love the way her novels transport you and then take you very deep into history of place.

My favourite book of all time is Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I read it when my children were wee, and I’m sure it took me a few months to get through it in between nappies and night feeds, but it left me breathless, and I believe it’s the book that finally forced the issue and magnetically pulled me towards writing.

What about your approach to research?

I think my PHD unlocked the process of how to undertake research in order to write the kind of novels I wanted to write. I had to submit a clear plan to the university.

The Secret Diary of Stephanie Agnew is set in 1995, and the main character is only a year younger than I am, so I could write some material about her without doing any research, but then there was this other thread about the Gaelic bards of the 1500s and 1600s, which required diligent historical research.

And how many novels have you produced?

There is Snugville Street, and its prequel — a novel with too many metaphors! It has just been re-written and published as Road to Snugville Street. Then came Dusty Bluebells, which was written with funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. I have also translated a version of that book into Ulster Scots. The latest novel is The Secret Diary of Stephanie Agnew.