My Writing Life: Penny Hancock
"If you don’t turn up to work, the muse won’t know where to find you."
1. What book should every writer read?
I’m going for a writing manual rather than a novel. My bible when I was writing my first novel was Steven King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. His writing advice is gold dust. The main message I took away from it was if you don’t turn up to work, the muse won’t know where to find you. I think every writer or aspiring writer will benefit from his words.
2. What is the one thing you wish someone had told you before you started your writing career?
I really really wish I’d been told that getting a book published is only the beginning and the real work comes later. Becoming a professional writer involves many skills including publicity, marketing, accounting, time management, public speaking, resilience, as well as more enjoyable areas such as teaching or mentoring.
Making a living from writing is so hard. I’d still have wanted to be a writer if I’d known all this, but I’d have been more prepared for the hard graft and the heart break, and I would have cherished the exciting moments more.
3. Who has been an influential figure in your writing career?
An English teacher at my school told me I should publish a short story I’d written in class as it ought to reach more people. This seemed impossible to me, and I gave it no more thought. Then, as a teenager still, I was lucky enough to meet (through a friend) the late writers Alice Thomas Ellis and Beryl Bainbridge. They wouldn’t have noticed me, I was just another kid in the room, but I was fascinated by their bohemian lifestyles and the fact they wrote as a job—something I didn’t know was possible. Meeting and reading their books confirmed for me I wanted to become a writer.
4. What is the best advice you’ve ever received about your writing?
To keep on going when the going gets really tough, which it is bound to do.
5. What was the proudest moment of your writing career?
When my first book came out, there was an auction for it. My agent took me to the two publishers who were bidding most for it, and it felt surreal that they should be fighting over my work. I did feel proud, but I didn’t realise this was a once in a lifetime moment and I’m a little sad none of my family or close friends were with me to celebrate those moments.
6. What is your typical writing day like?
I’ve just moved back to London, so my perfect writing day involves getting a bus (which provides good eavesdropping opportunities,) to the British Library. Once there, I write for three or four hours. When I get stuck, I walk home along the canal and ideas pop up out of nowhere, but I have to write them down before anybody speaks to me or they evaporate again.
A perfect writing day is not that frequent anymore however. I wrote my first novel when my children were still at home and I was teaching. Now my children have flown the nest and I only teach occasionally, but carving out time to get to the library feels harder than ever!
7. What are you reading right now?
Orbital, the Booker Prize winner, by Samantha Harvey. It lives up to its reputation. It is so beautiful and uplifting and reminds readers how we must absolutely cherish our beautiful planet.
8. Bookmarker or page-folder?
I’m a page-folder, bath-reader, spine-bender, coffee-stainer. I take books all over the place—it’s the content that matters more than the cover.
Penny Hancock is a writer and teacher. She is the author of Tideline, a Richard and Judy Summer Read, and four other novels including and I Thought I Knew You (East Anglian book of the year fiction 2019), and most recently The Choice.
Penny also writes on family in The Independent, The Guardian, Junior Magazine, Child Education and the Times Educational Supplement, amongst others. She is an award winning author of readers for Cambridge University Press English Readers series and of a two level English language course 'Pebbles' for young children.
Now an advisory fellow for the Royal Literary Fund, she enjoys mentoring other writers.
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