Elisabeth Russell Taylor describes how love and loss affects her writing

Elisabeth Russell Taylor is the author of six novels for adults, including Pillion Riders, In a Summer Season (Virago Modern Classics), Tomorrow and Mother Country. Her writing is packed with poetic descriptions, alongside unsettling darkness. Elisabeth has also published literary criticism, journalism and children’s literature, and has written for film and radio. Elisabeth is published by Virago, an imprint of Little, Brown.

What inspired you to become a writer?

I lived for 44 wonderful years with an artist, Tom Fairs. He worked all the time, painting landscapes, and encouraged me to do something creative that I loved. He wanted to live in a particular way, where work was at the centre of a loving relationship.

I have always been articulate, so because I was good with words, writing seemed the obvious choice. I started by writing children’s stories, and they included lots of descriptions of the English countryside, so, in a sense, I was producing the literary equivalent of Tom’s landscape paintings.

Did you find an agent or a publisher first?

I sent my children’s stories directly to publishers, and was lucky enough to have one picked up quite soon. It’s extremely difficult to have an agent, especially if you write literary fiction, because the agent will receive ten per cent of nothing. My books get very well reviewed, but they’re not best sellers.

How did you come to make the transition from writing stories for children to writing novels for adults?

I needed to do something meatier, to really explore ideas. The first novel I wrote was Divide and Rule, which was published in 1989. It was about a woman’s relationship with apartheid.

I make a lot of comparisons in my work between the way individuals treat each another and the way whole nations treat people.

I’m very interested in literature in general, and have written several books exploring what happens in the minds of creative people.

What are the main challenges of writing?

I write very much from my unconscious – I don’t plan a book. I wait until I have a good amount of material down before I start looking at it critically. That’s challenging – you have to be confident that you have it inside you and not interfere.

I lost my husband 22 months ago. It was such a terrible experience that it changed my way of thinking. It changed everything in my life. I thought I would never write again. I felt completely empty – for the first time I was groping around for things to write about.

I thought deeply about what I feel about therapy. I’m interested in the way the process affects both the therapist and the patient. For it to work well the relationship between the psychotherapist and the patient has to be very good, or very bad. It made me realise that my writing came from the strength of my relationship with Tom.

The ideas have become a series of short stories about the relationship between psychotherapist and patient. I’ve written three or four now. I hope to have it finished by the end of 2009, but who knows if that will happen?

What inspires you?

I have a very large range of things that interest me. I’ve done a great many things in my life (I’m now 79 years old), been all over the world and I read at least three books a week.

What are you reading at the moment?

The Bad Girlby Mario Vargas Llosa and Revolutionary Roadby Richard Yates. 

I’m also very keen on Sandor Marai. I’ve read Embersseveral times and I now have The Rebelsby the same author.

What has been the highlight of your writing career so far?

I wrote a book called Tomorrow, and dedicated it to the people of Denmark. The book is about a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who returns to the island of Mon, in Denmark, every year.

When Tomorrow was published in 1999, the Danish Ambassador threw a party for me, to celebrate the books. That was a highlight.

My books have been translated into French, Dutch and Lithuanian, and that’s another highlight. It’s a marvellous feeling to know that others want to know about your work.

What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?

Write from your own convictions – don’t try to write the sort of book you think publishers want.

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