One of the local authors at SWLF this year is 'Small Wars in Madrid' author Anthony Ferner. Anthony has lived in Warwickshire for over 40 years and since retirement has had 4 books published. Here Anthony tell us about his writing life.
Hello Anthony. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
I was an academic researcher for many years, working with international teams of colleagues, largely on the behaviour of multinational companies. After I retired (as professor of international business at De Montfort University) at the beginning of 2014, I had a lot more time to devote to my own writing. Since 2015, four of my novels or novellas have been published, two by Holland Park Press and two by Fairlight Books — including the most recent, Small Wars in Madrid. I’m married, with two grown-up sons, and have lived in Warwickshire for over forty years. Aside from writing, my interests include languages and reading Dutch, Spanish and Latin American literature. I’m also a keen skater, on inline and ice skates, and had a delightful morning on a flooded and frozen Welches Meadow back in January.
A keen skater! I wasn’t expecting that. So as an academic researcher, what drew you to the discipline of writing prose?
Since my early 30s I’ve felt the need for some sort of creative activity outside work. For many years, it was art: collage and etching, mainly. I had several exhibitions locally, but I got frustrated by reaching the limits of my technical abilities. That’s when I turned to writing fiction.
What happened?
At first, a friend and I tried our hand at screenwriting. We did okay, in that ScreenWM gave us a grant to develop one of our projects, but it became clear that the chances of getting anything made were virtually nil. So I decided to write novels. I plugged away for nearly 20 years with very little success. Then I became a member of the Tindal Street Fiction Group in 2010. Three years later, my first short story was published in the group’s thirtieth anniversary anthology, that story turned into my first novella, and I went on from there.
What do you find the hardest thing about writing fiction?
The hardest thing, I guess, is the need to keep so many balls in the air: working on the narrative arc of the story itself, guiding the characters’ development over the course of that story arc, maintaining the ‘subterranean’ themes that give resonance to the story, keeping a focus on style and ‘voice’. So much to consider, all together.
Yes I agree with you; it’s not just a case of ‘writing a story’ is it. Describe your writing process for us.
When I was still working full-time it was a question of grabbing an hour or two in the evenings and at weekends, in between parental responsibilities and normal family life. Since I retired I’ve had more of a routine: three or four hours of working on a project before lunch. I have the luxury of being able to use a room in our house as my office, with a mess of papers and books around me, and if I’m lucky a cat on my lap.
Sounds perfect!
I might do less taxing stuff like research later in the day when my concentration and energy levels are lower. Also, it’s a question of trying to be alert to ideas that come upon you unawares, when the brain is lying idle, so to speak: normally in my case it’s in the night, or while lounging in a bath letting the mind drift. I always write on the computer, never by hand (except for those random ideas in the night). Writing by hand would just slow me down. I don’t know how people manage it.
Tell us a little more of the story behind your book Small Wars In Madrid. What was the inspiration?
Strangely enough, the inspiration was the Spanish Armada. I describe the process in detail in the Acknowledgements to Small Wars. My (sadly, late) scriptwriting friend, John Murphy, and I wrote a screenplay about the survivors from shipwrecks of the retreating Armada off the coast of Ireland. I tried several times to turn it into a contemporary novel. In the end, just the idea of a Spanish sea captain and a shipwreck remained.
In your novel The Bone Box you chose a neurosurgeon as your main character - did you have to do much research for this?
I did do a lot of research. Happily, my siblings are both hospital consultants, one of them a neurologist, so I had considerable help and advice. For the rest, I read several memoirs by brain surgeons, which were really informative. And — oh, the wonders of YouTube! — I watched numerous brain operations online in full technicolor. These videos were invaluable for getting a sense of the neurosurgeon’s work, how messy it is, how flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants!
Oh...!
Family dynamics appear quite often in your work; why does this area of human existence draw you to it especially?
I suppose in some sense, all fiction is autobiographical. One’s themes seep up from one’s unconscious. I realised after a while that this is one of the central themes I was writing about: the complexities and tensions of relationships, especially within families. (Which is absolutely not to say that the relationships depicted in Small Wars are echoes of my own family!) I suppose it’s another version of the maxim, ‘Write about what you know’.
What makes a great story?
Don’t you think I would have written it if I knew! Seriously though, I think it’s when the various strands of story, character arc, voice and themes all come together and play off each other in a way that is satisfying intellectually and, as important, emotionally. There must be something at stake to make the reader keep turning the pages, and the emotion generated can’t be cheap, it has to be worked for— primarily through character development over the course of the novel.
How do you choose your titles?
Some have chosen themselves, like my first one, Winegarden, about a theoretical physicist called Winegarden. And the name itself had a certain ring to it. Inside the Bone Box refers to something one of the characters says in referring to the work of the neurosurgeon, and I thought it would make a striking title. I struggled more with the other two, partly because most of my ideas made the books sound like bone-dry non-fiction analyses. Small Wars in Madrid was originally called Small Wars in Europe, a work of modern history it would seem. Life in Translation sounded like a memoir, so we added ‘: A novel’ to the title!
Which would you say was easier to write - fact or fiction? Which do you find the most enjoyable?
Both are extremely difficult to do well, and only years of practice allow you to be even halfway decent; at least, that was true for me. I think I learned a lot about the structure of writing from so many years of churning out academic books and articles. Of course fiction is a whole lot more subtle than that — you often want to conceal your true intentions, and make sure the nuts and bolts of your fictional techniques are not too visible — but the principle is the same in both cases: what’s the story here, and how do I make it convincing and get it across in the most effective way to readers?
Excellent advice Anthony - and you make it sound so easy! How do you know what to write?
The hardest thing for me is having a viable topic to write about. Often you don’t know in advance what topic is viable and you need to write drafts to know whether or not it’s got ‘legs’. My computer folders are full of drafts of failed projects. Sometimes you can revive a failing novel by radical surgery — as was the case with SWiM.
Do you do much research?
It varies from book to book. The book on the neurosurgeon was very research-intensive as I explained earlier. As was Winegarden, a novella about a theoretical physicist which required me to at least convey a vague understanding of elements of quantum physics; needless to say, all the knowledge leaked away as soon as I’d finished the book. My research for Life in Translation, a novel about a literary translator, was one of the factors behind my learning Dutch. SWiM perhaps wasn’t so research-intensive, but there were still always things to check out: Catholic and Sephardi Jewish rites and customs; the topography of Madrid and of the Baltics; naval practices, ranks and systems; the geopolitics of modern Europe; the refugee crisis; Russia’s hybrid warfare; the nuances of Argentinian Spanish compared with the Spanish of Spain, and so on.
So not much then. Joking aside, when it’s time to relax with a book do you have favourite author or authors?
My reading is quite selective because I’m a very slow reader. I try to keep up my Spanish and Dutch through reading novels in those languages. I also read a fair amount of Irish literature. I don’t know that I have favourite authors but I certainly have favourite books. On the Irish side, Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones and Anna Burns’ Milkman stand out for me. Among the Spanish, Javier Marías’ Your Face Tomorrow trilogy and Rafael Chirbes’ Crematorium. There’s also a superb new crop of Latin American writers, especially from Argentina and Mexico: e.g. Ariana Harwicz, Fernanda Melchor, Samanta Schweblin, Yuri Herrera. Many of their fine novels are out in English. And finally, among the Dutch, The Assault by Harry Mulisch is pre-eminent for me.
What book are you currently reading?
I usually have a couple of books on the go so I can switch from one to the other. At the moment I’m reading a novel by an Argentinian who’s recently shot to prominence, Claudia Pineiro: A Little Luck. Alongside it I’m reading Mike McCormack’s latest novel, A Plague of Souls.
What do you think is the best part of being a writer?
Undoubtedly getting an acceptance letter from a publisher, closely followed by holding the copy in your hand, hot off the presses, so to speak.
Oh yes - the thrill of that must be immense. What's the most surprising thing you learned while writing your books?
That there’s a surprising amount of ‘stuff’ being processed in your unconscious of which you’re unaware. An example: when I wrote Winegarden, it brought up much unfinished business that must have been stewing quietly in my brain for the best part of four decades, especially about what it meant to be an agnostic Jew in Britain. In some ways, Small Wars in Madrid, though set among Spanish Sephardi Jews, is a continuation of that process of ‘self-interrogation’ about questions of faith, identity, uncertainty and collective insecurity. It was very surprising, too, that I didn’t set out to write about such things, but they floated up to the surface unbidden.
Do you edit your own work as you go along?
Yes, a bit, but mainly once I’ve finished each major draft.
Do you like to share your drafts? Tell us about critical feedback - is it hard to hear or a welcome friend?
On sharing drafts: yes, very much so. For me it’s a crucial element in improving a manuscript. It’s the same for fiction. I’m very lucky in being able to workshop chapters at my Tindal Street writers’ group. But I’ve also relied on two or three friends with excellent critical and editorial skills to go through the manuscripts for each of my novels at different stages. Then there are family and friends who are really useful in getting ‘your average reader’s’ view on the novel. So I always have an extensive list of acknowledgements! Critical feedback is a vital part of the process. It’s important not to be too precious or defensive about your own writing.
How long does it take you to write a book?
Small Wars took maybe ten years or more to go through its various iterations. Others, such as Life in Translation, took a year or two. My first three novels/novellas were in effect linked short stories, or vignettes, though with some kind of overall story arc to them.
How did your book deal with Fairlight come about?
I knew the people at Fairlight from having a previous novel, Inside the Bone Box, published with them, and it was a very positive experience (for them too, I hope!). So it was one place I submitted Small Wars. My first submission was considerably longer, and focused as much on the protagonists’ attempts to survive in the hostile environment of the Baltic States as on the personal relationships back home in Madrid. Fairlight made acute suggestions on how to refocus the original manuscript so that it wasn’t two books wrapped up in one. They left the door open for me to send it back to them. I followed their advice and, by subsuming the survival thread to the relationship dynamics in Madrid, I found the story coming to life. Fairlight liked the rejigged version and this is the result.
How important are book reviews?
For the author, they’re public feedback on what you’ve written. But you can’t take them too seriously. They can vary widely for the same book, particularly on Goodreads, and you realise some readers simply won’t get along with some books. (For one book, for which 75% of my Goodreads reviews were 4 or 5 star, I also got this single 1-star review: ‘I just couldn't get into this book. For the most part, it seemed to be filled with senseless ramblings.’ You have to shrug and move on.) Some books that I love, by well-known authors, have very mixed reviews on Goodreads, etc. — because they are too Marmite-y to attract universal acclaim. So I don’t mind a few negative reviews, as long as they’re being honest rather than snide for snide’s sake.
Is social media important to you with regard to how you feel about your success?
Social media is a tool for getting people to know you and your books, I think, rather than a validation of success. Maybe that’s because I’m using it wrong! I also try to contribute to the reading/writing community by using social media to tell people about Dutch, Spanish and Latin American novels that they probably won’t know about (and which are for the most part available in English). English-language literature is obviously fantastic, but there are also less well-known literatures that are worthy of reading and that convey a different outlook on the world, different styles and voices. Many of my reviews are on Goodreads, incidentally, if anyone’s interested.
Anything else?
I’m currently reworking one of the ‘failures’. It’s a novel about a toxicologist trying to do a job of work in an insecure, unstable and, well, toxic wider climate. After feedback, I realised it wasn’t working in its then form, so I took the key creative decision to change the toxicologist from a man to a woman. That has had major consequences, greatly altering the dynamic of the story in a number of ways. As a female professional, for example, she will have struggled in her career against patronising attitudes and obstacles, both at work and in her own family. She is also a single mother whose young kids are a priority for her. I don’t know if it will work, but it seems worth giving it a go. Of course, this focus raises the question of whether a male author should write from a woman’s perspective. I think Kit de Waal (a former member of Tindal Street Fiction Group herself) gives a pretty definitive answer to this in her excellent article on cultural appropriation. In a sense most fiction involves inhabiting other minds.
Thank you so much Anthony for this illuminating and very interesting interview and we look forward to your session at the festival.
Interview by Jacci Gooding
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