Sarah Waters live webchat, June 5th 2009

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature and has been an associate lecturer with the Open University. She has won a Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 2003, she was named Author of the Year three times: by the British Book Awards, The Booksellers’ Association and Waterstone’s Booksellers. She was also chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2003.

On Friday 5th June we hosted a live webchat with Sarah Waters. You can read the questions and answers below.

About The Little Stranger :

After her award-winning trilogy of Victorian novels, Sarah Waters turned to the 1940s and wrote The Night Watch, a tender and tragic novel set against the backdrop of wartime Britain. Shortlisted for both the Orange and the Man Booker, it went straight to number one in the bestseller chart. In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his. Prepare yourself. From this wonderful writer who continues to astonish us, now comes a chilling ghost story.

Read more about Sarah on her author page

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Comments

[Sarah Waters]

Looks like my time is up. Thanks to everyone for their really interesting questions!

Sarah x

[Sarah Waters]

Hi Alison

Glad you enjoyed the Hay event! Thanks for coming. Yes, I did an MA at Lancaster in 1987-88. I've never studied creative writing - there weren't many creative writing courses around when I was younger - but after my MA I did a PhD, and I've always felt that that was great training for being a novelist: it gave me the confidence to do a long, solitary project, and a daily writing discipline which I've never really lost.

[Sarah Waters]

Oo-er Tom, that's a bit complex. I suppose I do feel that I live in a bit of a world of my own - but then, doesn't everyone? I wouldn't say that writing fiction was my attempt to shape reality, etc - though being an author does give you a chance to indulge your megalomaniac urges, in the sense that it involves creating a little universe over which you have complete control. I've just been amazed and delighted that readers have wanted to follow me into those universes. That's one of the essential excitements of writing, for me: creating something from nothing, that other people, at a distance, can then also experience and enjoy.

[Alison]

Hi Sarah
I went to your talk at Hay on Wye last Saturday and really enjoyed it! I live in Lancaster and believe you studied for a MA at the university here. During all of your studies did you ever study creative writing or wish you had?
Alison

[Sarah Waters]

Hello Lorraine

I'd like to be able to tell you where exactly I'll be going next, but the truth is I don't really know. It will almost certainly be historical again, but I haven't yet settled on a period. I've become very attached to the 1940s, but also fancy a bit of a move - perhaps backwards a bit, into the 1920s or '30s. I also really loved writing about a haunted house, and am still fascinated by the idea of ghosts and the supernatural. So I'd definitely like to try a different sort of ghost story some day - though maybe not just yet. Things feel very up in the air - though in a good way. I'm hoping that a story is bubbling away somewhere in my mind, and will make itself known to me in due course...

[Tom]

Hi Sarah! I read somewhere - I think it was Graham Greene, who said that writers of fiction do so because they exist in a world slightly askance to the reality most of the rest of humanity live in. Writing fiction is a way for them to shape reality to fit their perspective rather than shape their perspective to fit reality. Do you think he was correct? Do you think it applies to you? Thanks!
Tom

[Lorraine]

This book definitely seemed to be a bit of a departure for you in terms of the genre - what is your next project and will it be contemporary or historical fiction?

[Sarah Waters]

Hi Marie Claire

I think I could write anywhere there was a desk and some peace and quiet. At the moment I have a lovely attic study, but for a long time I wrote at a desk in my bedroom, and that was fine. But I can't write in bits and pieces of time: my writing day has a definite arc to it, and I need a good few hours in which to get into my stride. So I tend to treat writing like a job, working weekdays 10-5ish. Only in the last few demented months of finishing a novel do I work in the evenings and at weekends. I like to be able to turn the computer off at the end of the day, and go and do something else.

[Marie Claire]

Hi Sarah - I was interested in how you plan your work during the time when you are writing a book - do you work to set hours in a particular place or can you write anytime/anywhere?

[Sarah Waters]

Hi Rodney

No, Hundreds Hall isn't based on any actual house, but I did visit a lot of Georgian country houses - as many as I could get access to! - while I was writing The Little Stranger, and I suppose Hundreds ended up being a kind of collage of bits of them all. I also threw in some details of my own - eg the double-story central staircase - if they felt right for the book. I wanted the Hall to feel authentic - but ultimately, like all haunted houses, I suppose it's a psycholgical or symbolic structure, too.

[Rodney]

Did you have a specific house in mind when you created "Hundreds"?

[Sarah Waters]

Hello Kirsty

There are a few authors whose novels I really look forward to, and they include Colm Toibin, Margaret Atwood, and Kazuo Ishiguro. A book that made a huge impression on me recently was Cormac McCarthy's The Road - a genuine masterpiece. And I'm really looking forward to reading Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel. I adored Beyond Black.

[Sarah Waters]

Hi Vera

I would love to visit Moscow some time. I haven't yet been invited, but would certainly consider it... But I shall be in St Petersburg later this year, for the lesbian and gay film festival there. It's great to know that I have fans in Russia - very exciting for me!

[Kirsty]

Hi, Sarah - I was just wondering what other contemporary novelists you liked, and which other writers' books you really look forward to reading?

[Sarah Waters]

Hi Ji Sook Kim

I have thought about using a contemporary setting - it's definitely something I'd like to try out some day - but probably not just yet... I think love has always been complex, actually, so I don't feel I need to move into the present to explore bisexuality (look at the ancient Greeks!). Up till now, however, I've mainly been interested in telling distinctly lesbian stories, and that still inspires me. But I can't say where I'll go in the future.

[Vera]

And another question. Do you have plans to visit Moscow for the purpose of promoting your books?

[Sarah Waters]

Hi Vera! Please don't apologise - your English seems better than mine! I'm sorry to say that I have not read very many Russian authors, and the ones I have read are pretty ancient - I need some more modern recommendations. But Anna Karenina is one of my favourite ever books - a fabulous novel, and one of the few novels that has made me cry. I'm also very fond of Fathers and Sons, and Sketches from a Hunter's Album, by Turgenev.

[Sarah Waters]

Hello Nicky

Yes, Affinity is set in Millbank Prison, and I did as much research into that prison as I could. It was a fascinating place - huge and grim, and built on what was then marshland, next to the Thames. They had to keep pouring cement into its foundations to stop it from sinking. A few of its walls are still there, next to the Tate, and the odd layout of the streets around there echoes the shape of the prison grounds... I love doing research, and usually start the novel-writing process with a few months of solid research in libraries etc; but I'll keep reading and researching as I go along. For the last 2 novels I read a lot of '40s novels and watched a lots of '40s films - so 'research', for me, can take lots of forms, but it's always a very fruitful process.

[Ji Sook Kim]

Hello, Sarah.
Have you ever thought going for contemporary setting for your next novel? Especially about bisexuality or complexity of modern types of love?

[Vera]

Hello, Sarah! First of all, best wishes from your Russian fans. And I apologise for my terrible English. Who is your favorite Russian writer, if you have one?

[nicky]

Hello Sarah, did you base your previous novel Affinity on the former Millbank Prison now the site of Tate Britain? Also how long does it take to do your research before you begin a novel?

[Sarah Waters]

Hi Catherine

Yes, I've been calling it a ghost story too - even though I think it's more properly a 'haunted house' novel... I've always been interested in the supernatural, and most of my novels have Gothic elements - especially Affinity. With The Little Stranger, I saw an opportunity to really go for the genre and enjoy it. I wanted to write about a decaying country house, with a middle-class family in it who felt under attack by social changes; I thought, What would happen if I pushed their feelings of menace and paranoia a bit further, and gave them something really malevolent to worry about? I really liked the idea - and I really enjoyed writing the book, figuring out how to make it spooky but (hopefully) believable at the same time.

[Catherine]

Hello, Sarah. The Little Stranger has been described very much as a "ghost story" - what was it that made you want to bring the supernatural into your writing?

[Sarah Waters]

Oh, and no, I don't have any personal connections with Warwickshire, but did visit the county several times while I was working on the book; read lots of Warwickshire newspapers from the 1940s; and was lucky enough to find a Warwickshire person who read my manuscript, and gave me lots of useful advice.

[Sarah Waters]

Hi John

I chose Warwickshire for lots of reasons. The Little Stranger was party inspired by a Josephine Tey novel called The Franchise Affair: that is set in the Midlands, so it seemed like a good idea to keep that setting. I also liked the fact that Warwickshire was undergoing a lot of changes in the late 1940s: it was rural, but had some heavily bombed areas - Coventry and Birmingham - that were rapidly rebuilding themselves; so it seemed to a good place to explore the social transformations that took place after the war. Warwickshire, too, didn't seem very spooky to me - not like, say, Cornwall or Norfolk. So it felt like more of a challenge to set a haunted house novel there!

[John]

The Little Stranger is set in Warwickshire - why did you decide on that setting and do you have any connections with the area?

[Sarah Waters]

Hi Rhiannon - glad you're enjoying the book. Sorry it spooked you! It both was and wasn't different writing as a man. I definitely felt that there were things Dr F wouldn't naturally notice, that a woman might - eg fabrics, clothes etc. But you have to do a certain amount of imaginative work to bring any narrator to life, male or female, so in that sense it was no different writing as him, than writing as a woman. Each narrator has their own quirks, I guess - part of your job as an author is to figure them out.

[Rhiannon Osborne]

Hello Sarah, I am half way through and really enjoying The Little Stranger. I got very spooked this morning in the staff room while reading it! The main protagonist in this novel is a man, was it different writing as a man compared to your previous novels which all had female leads?