Nick Hornby, live webchat - 8/9/2009

Nick Hornby was born in 1957. He is the author of five previous novels, High Fidelity, About a Boy, How To Be Good, A Long Way Down (shortlisted for the Whitbread Award) and Slam; three works of non-fiction, Fever Pitch (winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award), 31 Songs (shortlisted for the National Books Critics Circle Award) and The Complete Polysyllabic Spree; and a Pocket Penguin book of short stories, Otherwise Pandemonium. His new novel, Juliet, Naked, is published in September 2009 and he recently wrote the screenplay for the film An Education, which is due for release in the UK in October 2009. Nick Hornby lives and works in Highbury, north London.

About Juliet, Naked:

Annie and Duncan are a mid-thirties couple who have reached a fork in the road, realising their shared interest in the reclusive musician Tucker Crowe (in Duncan's case, an obsession rather than an interest) is not enough to hold them together any more. When Annie hates Tucker's 'new release', a terrible demo of his most famous album, it's the last straw - Duncan cheats on her and she promptly throws him out. Via an internet discussion forum, Annie's harsh opinion reaches Tucker himself, who couldn't agree more. He and Annie start an unlikely correspondence which teaches them both something about moving on from years of wasted time...

Read more about Nick on his author page

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Comments

[Nick Hornby]

Thanks, everybody. Good questions. Hope to see you at a signing.

Nick Hornby

[Nick Hornby]

Hi Adam,

It's all a battle, mostly involving time. Kids v work, reading v music, famiy occasions v football...You could do one of those bracketed knock-out charts, except there are only losers.

[Adam]

Your novels are often about clashing passions (football and romance, music and romance) - what do you find are your clashes in life?

[Nick Hornby]

Hi James.
The idea for the coincidence came from putting two things together: the popularity of certain suicide spots (Beachy Head, Archway Bridge in north London etc), with the popularity of certain nights of the year for suicides - Valentines, NYE etc. I was thinking about that, looking at the geography of the Archway bridge, and then I wondered whether people would actually bump into each other on those nights, in those places, and whether such a meeting could possibly affect the outcome...

[James]

Hi Nick,

I've been a fan of yours for some time, I love High Fidelity, but my favourite of yours is Long Way Down.

How did you realise you wanted to write a book about the utter coincidence of that exact group of people meeting on that roof that night? Its such a great story, but I can't seem to work out where the starting point for it would be.

Can't wait to read Juliet.

[Nick Hornby]

Dear Rachel,
Ha! You show an uncanny ability to see into a writer's soul...I've sat next to people on trains and buses who are reading one of my books, and usually I've moved away - it's agonising to watch them not laughing at a bit that's supposed to be funny. On holiday, though, it's different. A couple of times I've been sitting by a pool watching people read my book, and it seems too weird not to say something, especially if you have to spend day after day there! It happened this summer, with High Fidelity.

Yes, I find myself watching the movies if they're on, although never all the way through. When a film comes out, you tend to have to see it several times in a matter of weeks, and that usually cures you of any desire to watch it again in a hurry.
And yes, when Fever Pitch came out, I went down to Oxford St and stood in a bookshop and tried to see if I could see anyone buying it. As I remember, nobody did. Not while I was there, anyway.

[Rachel Simm]

Hi Nick

Love all your books and bought Juliet, Naked on Sunday and cant wait to start it. Couple of questions for you -

If you saw someone reading one of your books on a train etc would you go upto them and say 'I wrote that!!'?

If you were channel surfing and channel 4 were showing About a Boy (which I love and its great they show it all the time!!), do you find yourself watching it? (I do and I must have seen it 55 times and never tire watching it!)

and finally what was it like seeing your 1st book on a bookshelf in a bookshop? Did you go out on the publication date to see if it was there?

Love your work and thankyou for taking the time to read my questions

[Nick Hornby]

I have an office away from home and kids, where I go pretty much every day, unless a book has just been published, and I'm out promoting it. And over the years, the promotion has become an important part of the planning. I probably won't have an unbroken spell at my desk for a good few months, what with UK, US and European promotion (and this year, promotion for the film An Education), and a lot of thinking gets done in that time. In fact, by the time I get a chance to sit down again, I've built up a reasonable head of steam - I'll know a lot about the characters for the next book, and a little bit about the story. I don't plan very thoroughly, but I'll have a couple of narrative developments in mind, and a voice, and a tone. And then I try to write a thousand words a day.

[Tom]

Nick - nice to talk to you - I was wondering what your writing process is like? How long do you take planning each one and what's your daily routine during the creation of the book.

[Nick Hornby]

Hi Andy.
A lot of my favourite writers are American - I'd say the two novels I've most enjoyed recently are Jess Walter's 'The Financial Lives Of The Poets' and Curtis Sittenfeld's 'American Wife'. I'm a big admirer of Elizabeth McCracken, who isn't so well know in the UK. Dave Eggers is a big influence - the whole McSweeneys operation that he runs is incredible. And when I was starting out, I was trying to emulate - rip off! - Anne Tyler, Lorrie Moore, Tobias Woolf.

[Andy]

Hi, Nick - I was wondering what others contemporary writers you admire and which writers you might cite as influences on your fiction writing?

[Nick Hornby]

I'm glad you liked Slam - I'm very fond of that book. There are no plans at the moment, but everything I do is in response to the ideas I have. The next one is probably not a young adult novel - but the one after that might not be.

[Shaun]

After the brilliant Slam, will you be releasing more books aimed at younger people? My book group awaits your answer with bated breath...

[Nick Hornby]

Hi Rachel.
If by 'another level' you are referring to a career as a writer, then I never know what to say apart from: make sure you're writing something that people might want to read. Publishers will be reluctant to plough through your million-word novel that doesn't use vowels, for example. And try to find an agent. If a reputable agent is prepared to take you on, the chances are a publisher will too.

[Rachel]

Hi Nick!

What advice would you give to anybody that enjoys writing but wants to take it further, or to another level? What is the best way to try and develop yourself as a writer?

Thanks,

Rachel

[Nick Hornby]

Hi Alex.
I can honestly say that I've never lifted a character straight out of real life. I conceived of Duncan as a kind of academic manque - if his particular field of interest had been Conrad or Gerard Manley Hopkins or someone, he'd be gainfully employed in a university. But the moment characters start doing things - meeting people, breaking up relationships - then they become less genereic, hopefully.

[Alex]

Hey, Nick

Good to talk to you. Is Duncan based on anyone you have known or is he a kind of "everyman" example of the male obsessive?

[Nick Hornby]

Hi Greg,
I only started to think about the High Fidelity link when I was halfway through, really - it occurred to me that I was writing another book about how we consume music. But things are so different now from how they were in 1994/5, when I was writing my first novel, that it didn't seem to matter much. There was enough to say, and the characters are very different anyway.

[Greg]

It's been said recently that Juliet, Naked can be seen as a kind of companion piece to High Fidelity - how would you react to that - and did you think of it like that when you were planning the book?