I wrote my first novel when I was ten — meticulously typed on my dad's typewriter; a gruesome story of ghosts and murder set in a creepy old house; all of four pages long, and with more illustrations than words.
After that, I took a pause of about thirteen years while my writings were confined to less sensational scientific material (not that an impending invasion of the killer olive-green mould chaetomium olivaceum wouldn't be pretty sensational if you happen to be a mushroom farmer).
I started writing fiction again when I was about 23, when Doug and I were living in the South of France in Arles, and an old family friend suggested I write a novel about all my mad experiences in the theatre. So I thought why not? Easy! (well, I was young and naïve). And once I started writing I got the bug — I just couldn't stop. I discovered that writing fiction is just like directing a play — except that, when I'm writing, the actors actually do what they're told (most of the time).
I started writing generally about the theatre — really awful stuff; meandering and messy — and gradually my imagination began to get more focused. Michel started life as a minor character in a rambling theatrical story, a lone ballet dancer in a cast of egotistical thesps, and gradually he began commanding more and more of my attention until, one day, he got up and walked out of the theatre book into a novel of his own.
Actually, before he did that, he did something even weirder: he split, like an amoeba, into two halves of the same person, Michel and Roly. If you've read the book, you'll know that Michel and Roly aren't dissimilar in appearance, though one is good-looking and the other isn't. They're also opposites in other ways: body strength, emotional maturity, psychological stability. I also noticed, looking at Dancing on Thorns once I had finished it, that their fortunes seem to fluctuate in opposition to each other's: when Michel's star is rising Roly's is falling and vice-versa. I suppose it's a question of balance: the two characters, throughout the book, either have not enough of something, or too much. But while I was writing it, of course, they were two completely separate, real characters to me. I forgot they'd emerged from the same germ.
None of the characters are based on anyone I've ever met — I can't even identify links that I made unconsciously. Perhaps they're based on everyone I've ever met. I didn't include any characters I didn't like. I didn't want to spend all that time writing in the company of people I didn't care about. I had a hoot writing Dancing on Thorns. It poured out in great, mad dollops. Things came out of nowhere. Lisa, for instance. One day while I was writing, I found myself in the middle of a ballet audition with no idea where it was heading, and that night when I staggered into bed at four in the morning I suddenly imagined Michel saying, “She's just had a bit of rather bad news about a relative”, after discovering that Lisa's his sister. It made me laugh — and suddenly Lisa was born. Within a few chapters she'd become one of the most important elements in the story and I could hardly believe she only existed because of a slightly smutty joke.
Dancing on Thorns developed gradually over a period of about ten years. By the time I started researching it properly all the main characters were already fully formed. I wrote to a ballet company, Ballet Central, who are sponsored by British Gas, and asked for a job touring with them. I blithely told them that with my years of theatre experience I could be the wardrobe mistress, or the company manager, or even drive their bus. This turned out to be rather rash of me, as the head of the company wrote back immediately, offering me a job as their combined company-manager/wardrobe mistress/bus driver. It was probably the toughest six months of my life (although I expect I'd say that about quite a few theatre jobs I've done). Before we set off on tour I sewed until my fingers were so full of needle holes I could barely lift a needle, and ran around until my feet ached, and did so many all-nighters I started hallucinating about sleep. I remember one morning after an entire weekend sewing without sleep, travelling into town in the front of the bus staring at the broken white line in the middle of the road, thinking it was a line of stitches — and when the bus came to a zebra crossing, I thought, “Oh shit! Zig-zag!”
Those six months were incredible. Out on the road doing one or two-night stands with the company of young ballet dancers, I got a real education. I got to know each of them personally; loved them all; worried about their problems; watched their dancing with forensic interest. The ballet mistress and the composer/musical director both had the most superb knowledge and understanding of the whole business, which they shared with me with immense generosity. I hasten to say that I only applied what they taught me as it suited my novel, and all the book's improbabilities and mistakes are mine, not theirs. I also had a fabulous time working on a number of shows, in London and France, with students from the English National Ballet School.
Once I had knocked out the first draft of the book, I had to begin the huge task of hammering it into shape — and learning how to string a paragraph together that wasn't too illiterate. I discovered I'm a bit of a perfectionist (something I'd never suspected) and, even now, part of me would like another few months to iron out lumpy bits of it and try and make the writing better. I've found this the most interesting thing about the process of writing: the complete freedom and child-like lack of self-consciousness needed to dream and write the book in the first place, and then the fierce self-criticism, ruthless pruning, chopping and analysing needed to make it readable (this is obviously not true for writers who can get it right first time, but it's true for me).
The biggest chop was to lose five chapters from Part One, where the dancers are all adolescents. It was pretty painful as there were scenes in those chapters I was very attached to — funny bits, dramatic bits — but they had to go: this wasn't supposed to be a book about teenage angst. Actually, one of those chapters later went back in on the advice of my editor at Random House, Kate Elton. I'm very lucky to have been working with Kate; she's a fantastic editor.
If there's anything else you'd like to know about the book, please feel free to ask. You can email me via the Contacts page.