Author Kate Pullinger advises us to be ruthless in our redrafts
Kate Pullinger
Kate Pullinger’s books include Weird Sister and A Little Stranger, as well as short story collections My Life As a Girl In a Men’s Prison and Tiny Lies. She co-wrote the novel of the film The Piano with director Jane Campion, and her latest novel is The Mistress of Nothing, inspired by the true-life story of Lucie Duff Gordon and her maid, Sally Naldrett. Kate is constantly exploring possibilities with projects such inanimatealice.com, a multimedia graphic novel in episodes, and Flight Paths, which aims to create a networked online novel. She talks to us about how encouragement and luck kick-started her writing career.
What inspired you to become a writer?
I saw writing as what I would do with my life from an early age. I was a big reader, so it seemed like a natural step for me. I had a couple of encouraging teachers while I was at school; when I was sixteen my English teacher also taught Creative Writing and he really encouraged me.
Did you find an agent or a publisher first? How did you find them?
I found a publisher first. In the late 1980s I won a couple of short story competitions in London and my stories came to the attention of an editor at Jonathan Cape which, at the time, was still an independent publisher (shows you how much publishing has changed in 20 years).
She wrote to me and asked if I had more stories, and if I would consider letting them publish a collection. This was very, very lucky - right place at the right time - and the chances of this happening now are very slim. Next came the agent; luckily for me, while editors and publishing houses have come and gone, I’ve had the same agent all this time.
Did you face much rejection initially?
I had several years of sending out short stories and having them rejected but, the fact is, getting that initial contract was, as I said, very lucky, as I was only in my mid-20s and completely inexperienced.
How would you describe your writing?
I write what the trade calls ‘Literary Fiction’. In the work I do on digital platforms, I think I still write ‘Literary Fiction’, but there it is multimedia, which challenges our notions of how to tell a story.
What drives you to keep experimenting with new writing styles?
I love collaborating on digital platforms, and with my books every new novel has to pose new challenges, or I’d feel I was cheating somehow.
Whose writing do you admire?
Many writers, too numerous to mention, from F Scott Fitzgerald to Don DeLillo via Naguib Mahfouz, Hanan Al-Shayk, and Alice Munro.
What are the biggest challenges of writing?
The self-discipline required to return re-drafting the same pages over and over again as well as the ability to trick yourself into believing you can do it are always big challenges for me.
What do you enjoy most about it?
Just the pure pleasure of the right words in the right order on the page.
Where do you carry out the majority of your writing?
As of last autumn I now have an office at the end of my garden that I absolutely love. No one is allowed in here except me.
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
Nothing could ever top receiving that letter from the editor at Jonathan Cape asking if I had enough short stories for a collection. It arrived on Christmas Eve!
What advice would you offer an aspiring writer?
Learn how to be ruthless with your work - when to cut, when to delete, when to move on.
What are you working on now?
I have a heap of projects on the go at the moment, though I am taking a break from writing a novel and not really even thinking about what the next one might be.
One project is a libretto for an opera based on ‘Dorian Gray’; and as well as that there’s a series of multimedia short stories aimed at secondary school classrooms, ‘Lifelines’.
Kate’s books are available from Amazon
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