20 Questions for Polly Samson

[Writing is] like swimming in a cold river and I waste a lot of time at the edge, barely able to dip my toe in the water, but once I've made the plunge it's heavenly

1) Do you come from a literary background?

My German grandmother studied literature at Munich University and her brother was a promising young poet who died during WW1. Following the war and her displacement by Hitler she created the German Literature Department at the National Central Library in London. My mother is a writer and her memoir Black Country Girl to Red China has recently been published for the third time.

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2) What writers did you enjoy reading as a child?

The writer who turned me into a reader was Laura Ingalls-Wilder, who wrote the Little House series. She also turned me into a book reviewer at a very tender age as the same grandmother mentioned above would send me the next in the series only after I'd sent her a review of the last. I enjoyed reading them all over again, reading them to my eight-year-old daughter. It's astonishing how she makes the history of a frontier family come alive for such young readers, and she doesn't skirt the harsher facts of their lives such as near starvation, the slaughter of animals and racism. I very much enjoyed my daughter's response to the series and like me, she longs to eat the food that the family scrapes together: Corn mush, Prairie chicken and Miracle cakes.

Once I'd finished the series I read voraciously, Tove Jannson, E. Nesbit, Arthur Ransome, Enid Blyton (especially books like The Wishing Tree) even Angela Brazil, really anything and everything I could lay my hands on until ponies came along and then, for the next few years, my wide-ranging palette became reduced to nothing but books by the Pullein-Thompson sisters.

3) Did you write as a child?

Yes, constantly. In fact I wrote stories before I could read properly. When my first book was published my parents bound one of my childhood stories into a little hardback and gave it to me by way of congratulation.

4) How did you get started as a writer?

I was a secret writer until the one friend who had read my stories insisted I enter a short story competition in the Guardian. I was runner-up and after that everyone knew and Ed Victor contacted me and asked if I had enough for a collection.

5) Do you find writing easy?

I find writing incredibly easy once I've got going. It's like swimming in a cold river and I waste a lot of time at the edge, barely able to dip my toe in the water, but once I've made the plunge it's heavenly.

6) Describe your working day.

I long to get up and start work straight away but that is never what happens. The phone rings, I find a million other things to do while butterflies swoop around in my stomach at the thought of writing. Then suddenly it seems too close to lunch time and my husband is a really good cook. I usually get to my desk by the early afternoon which is incredibly un-ideal for family life as I'm still fully immersed until around seven. In my fantasy life I only write during the hours that my children are at school.

7) Do you do much research for your work?

I try to write about things that I know but very much enjoy researching the things that I don't. For Perfect Lives I had to learn a fair bit about tuning pianos (a piano tuner is one of the main characters in two of the stories) and also modern Polish history for the character of Leszek who appears in three of the stories.

8) Please guide us through the stages of one of your books - the ideas, the planning, the drafts, working with an editor, etc.

I write a first draft on the computer and then print it out and work on the page. I will then alternate between drafts on the computer and drafts on the page, trying hard to leave it alone for as long as possible between each so that I can return with a fresh pair of eyes. In the case of Perfect Lives, my wonderful editor Lennie Goodings got me started by challenging me to produce a story by a certain date and to show it to her (this was after a long period where I had been unable to write). This method really worked and after two or three stories she said: 'Do you really need me to give you a date for the next one?' and I found that I didn't because I was being swept along by the characters by then.

9) Do you show your work in progress to anyone?

I read aloud to my husband, often several times a week, but I don't show it to anyone until I think it's ready for the publisher. Before I finally send it I usually ask my friend Justine Picardie to read it just to be sure.

10) How did you manage to fit writing in with raising a family? Are you good at managing your time?

I am hopeless at making my writing fit family life and that is probably the main reason that there has been a gap of ten years. I'm a bit all or nothing about everything so when I'm writing the children exist only in the margins. Now that they're older it shouldn't be such a problem but I don't regret not writing fiction for so long because I wouldn't have wanted to miss a moment.

11) Have you any special advice for someone wanting to write a book?

Never think about the reader. I know that might sound odd but trying to second-guess what someone else will think will prevent a book being populated by convincing characters: they might all come out terribly self-conscious. The most important thing is to inhabit your characters and worrying about potential readers will detract from that.

12) How do you relax?

Mucking about with dogs, playing the piano, making things (balsa wood furniture, dolls clothes, cakes etc), walking; anything that doesn't involve sitting around. I stopped smoking ten years ago and I don't think I've felt properly relaxed since! I get very tense if I have to watch television for example but I'm ok if I can do some knitting or a crossword at the same time.

13) Who are your favourite living writers?

Off the top of my head: Rose Tremain, William Trevor, David Sedaris, Susan Hill, James Lasdun, Lorrie Moore, Francis Wyndham, Margaret Atwood, Nora Ephron and Alice Munro. That three of my favourite writers, Maggie O'Farrell, Ali Smith and John Banville have given generous quotes for the cover of Perfect Lives is the loveliest thing that has happened in my writing career.

14) Who are your favourite dead writers?

Too many to mention so I've picked ten: Angela Carter, Elizabeth Taylor, Daphne du Maurier, Bruce Chatwin, Flaubert, Colette, Brian Moore, Barbara Comyns, Laura Ingalls-Wilder, Somerset Maugham.

15) What do you like best about being a writer?

The writing once it's flowing! I dislike everything that precedes and follows this happy state but it's worth it for the brief moments when word effortlessly follows word and then I am so happy that I even find myself laughing at my own jokes on the page.

16) Is there anything you don't like about being a writer?

I dislike the guts-in-a-bucket feeling as publication draws nearer. There's a poem by Margaret Atwood called 'Heart' that painfully evokes the sensation of the author 'like a newly-hired waiter' while 'instant gourmets' pick over their heart making critical comments about its texture and taste.

17) Have you ever had a work rejected?

Not in the UK but constantly by publishers in America.

18) How did you first get published?

I used to write features for the Sunday Times and Ed Victor liked my style and asked me to write a novel. After the Guardian competition he sold my first collection of stories, Lying in Bed, to Virago and then my novel Out of the Picture.

19) Do you hang out with other writers or stay away from the literary world?

I love talking to other writers, but only ones who enjoy what they do.

20) Do you enjoy meeting your readers and talking to them?

I'm as drawn to anyone who has read and enjoyed my books as a pregnant mosquito to the pulse of a warm sweet child!

Polly Samson's new collection of stories is available from all online bookshops at £2.99. amazon.co.uk/Polly-Samson-Short-Stories-ebook

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