Who are you?

I haven’t the faintest idea, and that is serious. I reinvent myself most days, and end up with the same package, give or take, but it’s always an accident. I was adopted at birth, and I guess that makes you query your roots, and see every other rootlet as a very tenuous thing not to be given too much credence. I know some things… that I’ve made a stab at being a wife for a long time to the same man and we both deserve medals or the key to the nuthouse. I am a good mother of boys and would have been hopeless with girls. I wear chosen labels; short fiction writer (for love), non-fiction writer (for money), editor, CW teacher. Catch this while you can. Tomorrow I may be climbing mountains. I quite like champagne but could live without it.

What do you write?

Like Jeanne d’Arc, I hear voices. Thank God for that. Do you realise, that poor woman was really a writer and got burned for it? I write short stories. Here in the UK, say that to most people and they assume it’s for women’s weekly magazines to read in the hairdresser’s. If it was, I’d be rich. I do not write about animals and their love for humans and amazing feats of empathy. I do not write about love between cardboard beings, who when they make love, end up corrugated. I do not write twist-in the tail, horror, sci-fi, romance, fantasy or historical fiction. Or crime. I write short fiction and very short fiction, and flash fiction. My shortest publication was 70 characters long, where ‘a character’ included each space and punctuation mark

Why do you write what you write?

Because I can. And that took a minute to think about. I was going to pontificate about ‘having a deep pull to express my unique view of the world’, but I guess that is pretentious crap. I could have said ‘because I find it fulfilling’ but I won’t because some days it undoes me completely. I certainly couldn’t say ‘I write fiction because it earns me a living’. I came close to saying that I never really feel 100% close to anyone and reading some wonderful writers (Calvino, Munro, Carver, Updike, Crace, Sebald, Trevor) gives me a sense of belonging for a second… but I won’t say that either.

Why should we read what you write?

Because you may meet characters that are fairly unique, and who made me sit down to tell their stories for them. Ordinary people who, were they flesh and blood, you may pass in the street without a backward glance but who may really make you think if you give them a few minutes of your time. But you see, even that sounds pretentious. I don’t like the word ‘should’ It reeks of medicine, and homework, and dusty churches. Why might you read what I write? Because you may enjoy some of it, and I love giving people pleasure.

Is the world a better place because of what you write?

It could be. I’m no judge. Don’t my characters have a right to exist? Isn’t the world a better place in one sense with every character that inhabits it?

It is certainly a better place in one tiny corner because of the CW teaching I do. I teach the disadvantaged; the homeless, drug addicts, refugees, asylum-seekers. I don’t believe writing is the preserve of the few. It’s talking with a pen. Who cares about spelling, grammar, language issues? They can be ironed out later. I’ve met some wonderful, natural ‘writers’ who were written off early on because they couldn’t write neatly at school. How DARE the education system give people a deep sense of inferiority that lasts for decades and undermines their self worth? I can increase someone’s self esteem through opening up their creativity when they are at rock bottom, and that’s a gift for which I will always be grateful.

[Previously on the Five Minute Interview]