dovegreyreader asks... Fay Weldon

Fay, we've kept them guessing all weekend and what a pleasure it is to have you seated in the 'dovegreyreader asks...' virtual armchair. I wonder if you could talk us through where Chalcot Crescent came from, what compelled you to write it and does this quote from Frances really speak for you,
'I have always used fiction to get to the heart of the matter, to discover what it is I know. It is up to the facility analysts, when they finally get around to reading this text, to decide what is memoir, what is fact, what is truth (Pilate-like I wash my hands) or some embroidery of the truth.'

How I came to write Chalcot Crescent makes  a long story.  Do you really want it? Stories about publishing are always interesting to writers, editors,  agents and publishers but I’m never sure about readers. Their concern, quite rightly,  is the finished book. But you have me seated in a chair , and asked me a question so I reply. I seldom volunteer information, but if people ask me questions I reply and reply and can’t stop. I always speak the truth but claim I tell lies so I can deny anything I have said afterwards, if people choose to use what I said as evidence against me, which quite often happens.
But here it is for what it’s worth: and  it’s in second draft – that is to say it is written down not spoken, the latter being  first draft stuff -   so I can’t even disclaim it. And it is a tale, I’m afraid,  of authorial delinquency.
Novel writing – I wrote the first in 1967 – used to be such a simple process.  You wrote a  novel and gave the finished MSS to a publisher and  if he liked it he would print it and give it to a bookseller who would be pleased to put it on his shelves (along with all your back list) and people would come in and buy. The editor was a person who saw the book through the production process in-house, and would not dream of making a comment other than point out the odd spelling mistake or inconsistency.
But the process is no longer simple; the art form grew into an industry and no one but me seems to feel ashamed of thus describing it.  The writer provides the raw material, but others refine it, process it and package it to suit the readership.  The writer is marketed as a personality, the book as of a  particular genre. The writer, guided by the editor,  provides a synopsis, on the strength of which he( more often these days she)  is commissioned, and given an advance to go away and write what is calculated to sell. The jacket will be designed on the strength of the synopsis.
All would be well except that  writers write novels out of both  left and  right brain joined in a marriage of equals,  and writing a synopsis is a left brain activity only, born out of reason, self-interest and common sense,  and the more you stick to the synopsis when you write, ironing out the entertaining follies of the right brain, the more boring your  book becomes. I have gone on strike and am never going to write another synopsis before I have written the entire book and can then  describe it. 
For any synopsis can sound good, if it has a what-if  theme, a beginning, and an end. This  kind, though persuasive, won’t have a middle – the  ‘what if’s’ having emerged in the first chapter – and what else is there to do but invent incident. 
Then you’re in trouble.    
In the middle of 2007  I gave the publishers one such  synopsis, too  persuasive for my own good. They accepted it with enthusiasm. For gloomy months I  stared at the page. I would write a line or two and then start  playing Pharoah. The editor’s title ‘What Made Her Run’ left  me feeling hopeless. It was my fault. I had given them a domestic tale about a family riven by run-away wives – surely  a genetic trait. By the beginning of 2009 the novel had its jacket – tormented girl; leaning against wall (sales said this was bound to sell) – but where were all the words that were meant to be in the middle? Somewhere stuck  in my head. So one day in January I just I gave up and wrote  an entirely other novel I didn’t know I wanted to write in ten weeks non stop, about a house I’d lived in twenty five years back, with my unborn sister Frances as its protagonist.  80,000 words of a Dystopia with jokes. Set in 2012 when we’re all living on National Meat Loaf laced with SRRI’s, suitable for vegetarians.
Chaos built up around me as I wrote in the form of scrumpled, shoddy bits of paper, dirty washing,  littered desk and unanswered e-mails. This is a good sign, though distasteful at the time.  Something real is going on.

It ended up as the novel you have been so kind about, Chalcot Crescent so unexpected it put my publishers into shock and they rejected it.
But  Corvus   picked it up within hours and published it within months,  with a jacket that fitted the text and did not put me into chick lit, where for years I have been cornered,  driving my readers  reasonably to claim for damages under the Trades Description Act. .
And yes, what Frances says in Chalcot Crescent speaks from my heart. Frances is an alternative version of me, but more unscrupulous than me and a mother of daughters not sons. 'I have always used fiction to get to the heart of the matter,’ she says, ‘to discover what it is I know. It is up to the facility analysts, when they finally get around to reading this text, to decide what is memoir, what is fact, what is truth (Pilate-like I wash my hands) or some embroidery of the truth.' The ‘facility analysts’ are the interrogators of NUG, the National Unity Government, who are reading Frances’s manuscripts and trying to decide to eliminate her, because she speaks the truth, or turn her into a national treasure, because she writes fiction..

Fay, I think you'll always be treasured for all your books, but is there one that feels most special, and if so why?

Puffball is special because it is about the birth of one of my children. I have four boys. My eldest son  is a musician and turned it into a kind of opera with speech not singing:  and my second son is a film maker and he turned it into a film directed by Nicolas Roeg. I discourage them from reading anything I write – who wants a writer for a mother -  but they somehow got hold of this one. We work on it together but never discuss it, just accept it as a given.

I'm really sorry but we are terribly nosy here and love to know about a writer's writing day, so can you tell us about that and what the process involves for you? We are always very impressed with news of special writing socks / jumpers/ trousers, fountain pens and ink but really how the writing happens and whether the dishwasher needs to be empty first etc.

The south west wind blows really cold into my office windows: it is an old house and  we are on top of a hill. So I have taken to writing down in the basement on the laptop in winter where it’s warm, if haunted, and  someone gave me some black woolen mittens with bright bobbles on the knuckles for which I am very grateful. I like it down there with the cobwebs and the bobbles dancing as I  type.

I'm now adding an extra degree of inquisition because I think we'd really love to know what writers do when they don't write, what interests you and fills your non-writing days?

What do I do when I don’t write?  I teach. I am a Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University
It’s meant to be one day a week but always  stretches to more. Teaching  students  who volunteer to learn  is a delight. You just tell them what you never knew you knew, and warn them about the problems they are going to run into if they’re not careful, and incidentally teach yourself by analyzing what it is you do yourself.  Otherwise I just assume I am writing all day, when  not sleeping or eating or going to the dentist.  If my head gets too tired I rest it  playing  old fashioned  empire building computer games. Chalcot Crescent was written with the help of Pharaoh. I go abroad when publishers ask me to,  and talking has to take  the place of writing.  Next week I go to Mantua for three days for an Italian translation  of  Puffball: in October I go to Norway to open a conference on the changing face  of copyright . This is frightening, but I am only really there for light relief.

Who must we read? Which authors and books would you urge us not to miss?

Sadie Jones’s Small Wars, just out,  is really good.