David Almond Interview

It wasn’t like I thought “Oh, I must write a story about this,” but I was obviously driven by that force. All of my books contain little fragments from my life really.

But what if you’d never been successful? Can you imagine what you’d be doing now?
I don’t know really, because in a sense I had that; I had years of rejection. I always had a little bit of success – not much, but enough to keep me going – and I never really imagined myself giving up.

Had I got to that point, I don’t know. I guess writing involves sitting still a lot at desks, so maybe something mobile like a countryside ranger or something like that. An explorer – that’s another thing everyone wants to be as a kid isn’t it!

And what would you say is the secret behind writing a successful book?
I think the only thing you can do is write the best story you can, in the best way that you can. People come to me and say “what should I do in order to write a great book,” and all you can do is say that really.

You’ve got to write the story that you want to write. You can’t just write what you think will be liked by a lot of people; it’s got to drive you and have its own power. You can’t do anything else really.

If you’re going to spend a long time writing a book, you’ve got to enjoy doing it and also feel that you have to do it.

How long does it take to write a book out of interest?
Well Skellig actually didn’t take that long – about 7 months all together I think – and at the time I was teaching full-time as well. But usually it takes me about a year to finish a novel.

And do you treat it like an office job – is it a 9-5 thing?
When I’m at home I try to do it like that, yeah. One of the things that happens though, when you do have several books published and you’re doing well, you get lots of nice invitations to things that you really have to do; on top of the writing.

So it gets to a point where you’re incredibly busy. I’m very busy at the moment. In some ways I think I had more time when I was teaching than I have now. When I’m writing though, it’s a job. I start at nine and I have a lunch break then finish at the end of the day. It’s the only way to do it really…

It must take a lot of motivation…
Aye, but as well as being work, it’s also play. I think it’s really important to recognise that it’s hard work and can be very dure but it’s fun as well.

How do you like to relax in your spare time?
I suppose just ordinary things really; we go to the theatre, watch the telly. We live out in the Northumberland countryside so we actually like going to cities now. We go to art galleries and there are some really nice beaches near us; very cold beaches up here but they’re very nice.

Finally, after doing so much, is there anything else you’d still like to achieve?
Oh I have some outrageous goals, but the predominant one really is just to keep on writing good books. Last year there was an opera made of Skellig; I’d like to work on another opera because that was really fascinating to do.

But really, I just want to keep on writing more books. It’d be nice to have another movie as well. The process of seeing Skellig made has been amazing, so I’m really hoping that some of the other projects that are in the pipeline come to fruition.

It’s fantastic to see the finished result and how someone else tells your story. They bring their own vision to it and you just have to step back really and watch it happen.

Skellig DVD out 27th April

FemaleFirst - Anthony Hill

Back to page 1