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Author
Interviews Interview: Victoria
Routledge Author
of Friends Like These, Kiss Him Goodbye
and the forthcoming ...And For Starters,
Victoria Routledge's position as a popular
fiction writer is already well
established. We spoke to Victoria about
her writing and where she sees herself in
the future. Fiction-Net:
So what
you working on at the moment? Victoria
Routledge: I've just finished doing
the final proofs of ...And for Starters,
my new book, which is out 6th August, and
I'm about a fifth of the way into Book 4,
which at the moment is called Rosetta and
the Boys. It's about a 70s rock-chick
called Rosetta, whose husband Brian
managed tours for the big supergroups, and
her four sons - they're now grown-up,
she's hit 50 and is about to move to
Ireland to write her autobiography. Each
of the boys is very different, (none of
them believe that Brian is really their
father, for a start) but despite all they
have going for them, they're all slightly
broken inside in some way; Tanith, the
casting director girlfriend of the second
brother, starts to put all the pieces of
their family together, and they're made to
realise what it means to be
related. It's
actually funnier than it sounds from that
summary, honestly! I wanted to look at the
effect that 70s idea of women having a
primary responsibility to be themselves,
rather than wives or mothers or whatever,
ultimately has on the people around them,
and on themselves in later life. And i've
always been fascinated by the little pixie
rockstar kids that you see being led
through Customs in goatskin outfits - what
happens to them when they grow up? How can
Marc Bolan's son be penniless? What did
Marianne Faithfull's son see hanging round
with the Rolling Stones? Did Robert
Plant's kids really gambol naked in
streams like they do in The Song Remains
the Same? It's also a big fat excuse to
read rock biographies all day and listen
to Led Zeppelin in the name of
research. Fiction-Net:
Is
there a particular time of day or night
when you do most of your
writing? Victoria
Routledge: I try to get at least 1750
words done by Ricki Lake at 5.25pm.
Sometimes I can do more in the evening,
and actually more interesting material
seems to come out before I go to bed. Or
if I've just got in from a boozy dinner. I
like to think I'm good at working in the
morning, but it's really just wishful
thinking. I always scour other writers'
'How I Write' features in the hope of
finding someone else as chaotic as me, but
they all claim to write from 6am, take the
dog for a walk at 11am and then revise for
the rest of the day or 'brush up on their
Latin' or something. Can this be
true? "I
do love the feeling of being where things
are happening, and knowing that if I
wanted to get in the car and get a bagel
at 3am, I could" Fiction-Net:
In
'Kiss Him Goodbye', Kate is terrified of
moving down to London. As a northerner
living in London yourself - how scary is
the London scene? Victoria
Routledge: London is a very
long way from Cumbria, where I come from.
I know lots of people from home who
regularly go to America on holiday, but
have never been to London, on the grounds
that it's dangerous, expensive, a bit
snotty, full of weirdos, and with the same
shops as Manchester and Leeds at twice the
price. (And America isn't?) Then again, I
know lots of Londoners who've travelled
all over the world, but never bothered to
go to the Lakes or the Peak District,
which is just as big a loss for
them. I'd
only been twice before I moved here in
1995 and got very excited by the Monopoly-
board thing - look! there's Big Ben! Look!
There's Buckingham Palace! Look! There's a
policeman! etc, etc. Very embarrassing for
my mates. But that old cliche of London
just being a series of small towns linked
up is true, and once you work out that no
one really needs to shop on Oxford
Street ever, and that plenty of
little Italian cafes will do a cappuccino
for a lot less than £2.50, you're OK.
Like Kate, I felt incredibly lonely and
vulnerable at first, just because I didn't
know where anything was, but I made myself
visit two coffee shops a weekend to begin
with, learning buses and streets and areas
until eventually it all fell into place.
But cost of living and general London
insanity aside, I do love the feeling of
being where things are happening, and
knowing that if I wanted to get in the car
and get a bagel at 3am, I
could. Fiction-Net:
'Friends
Like These' had a group of main characters
whereas 'Kiss Him Goodbye' focuses
entirely on Kate. Was it easier being able
to devote more attention to one central
figure? Victoria
Routledge: It was easier writing about
one central character, because you don't
have to worry about balancing the
attention, but then I worried that with
only one effective viewpoint, the
narrative would get a bit too linear. I
like the ensemble pieces, because you can
use the other people and their experiences
as a mirror to characteristics; it's not
so show-and-tell. The good thing about
having one central character is that you
have more control over where the story
goes - I tend to get side-tracked into
writing five books in one, which can be a
bit of a nightmare for my
editor. Fiction-Net:
Do
you base your characters on 'real' people,
ie. friends? Victoria
Routledge: Er, no. Can I make that an
official statement? I DO NOT BASE MY
CHARACTERS ON FRIENDS. A couple of my
boyfriend's mates now refuse to speak in
front of me, because they're convinced
that I use them as templates for
characters - which is a bit rich since
they haven't actually read anything I've
written... Though
obviously you draw on inspiration all
round you, basing characters on friends is
never a good idea in the long run, not
only because it's the quickest way of
pruning your address book, but because the
characters will only 'do' what your
friends would do in the same situation. If
you don't think of them as autonomous
people, they'll have exactly the same
limitations, and that obviously affects
your plot flexibility. What I tend to do
is to take tiny single observations and
use them to flesh out a character I've
already made up - so the fundamental
character is totally fictional, but
decorated with hundreds of observations of
lots of different people, real and
imaginary. The trouble is, if you have
realistic twenty-something characters in
realistic-ish twenty-something situations,
friends see one thing they think they did
or might have said and assume the whole
character is based on them. And the girls
always assume they're the bitch, whereas
the lads assume they're the gorgeous hero
and that you're just working out a secret
crush. Fiction-Net:
'Kiss
Him Goodbye' has more humour in it. Was
this intentional? Victoria
Routledge: It wasn't intentionally
funnier - maybe there was more situational
comedy in it with the publishing setting,
and more opportunity, with the one central
character, to have those running office
gags. Actually, I thought there was a lot
more darkness underlying the humour; Dant
isn't really very nice at all, and you can
understand why. Fiction-Net:
After
Rachel's dog and Dant's cat, can we expect
a non-human character to feature in all
your books? Victoria
Routledge: Um, you're right: Iona, the
agony aunt in ...And for Starters, has two
Battersea rescue cats. Oh no! I don't even
like cute fictional pets! Ratcat was meant
to be a sort of familiar for Cressida -
the cute family pet gone rabid - and
Humpty was meant to be a cunning visual
aid for the genuine trust between Rachel
and Fin. You knew that when things went
horribly wrong that he would be there to
protect her. Iona's cats are there to
symbolise the stage of her relationship
with her boyfriend Angus; they're not
married, but they have cats together. It's
a muddy compromise a lot of my friends
have adopted... Fiction-Net:
Do
you think you've been influenced by any
other writers? Any particular
favourites? Victoria
Routledge: I love Marian Keyes - she
has a fantastically light and fluid style
that's really, really hard to pull off.
She's a very underestimated writer. I also
love Kate Atkinson and Kate Saunders for
those swirling, absorbing family novels
and Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins and
John Galsworthy for proper train-journey
reads. Georgina Wroe, who writes
unpigeonholeable crime/comedy/thrillers
often set in Russia, should, by rights, be
far more famous. Jeremy Clarkson is very
funny too - sorry. Fiction-Net:
Where
do you see yourself in ten years? Still on
the shelves of WH Smith? Victoria
Routledge: I hope I'll still be
writing, preferably in a cottage in
Galway! Every novel is a real learning
process - my long-term aim was always to
write stories I wanted to read, so
ideally, by the time I'm thirty-five and
want to read something a bit more
spiritual or serious, I'll have the skills
to make it work technically, as well as
the maturity to express something more
complicated. If I really didn't have
anything to say through a book, I wouldn't
start it. I'd
like to learn how to write screenplays - I
don't think you can assume that because
you can write in one format, you can waltz
straight into another - and carry on with
the feature writing I'm doing at the
moment. My ultimate childhood career dream
was always to be editor of Smash Hits, but
that looks like it's gone by the wayside,
so I might have to settle for being a
columnist in Top Gear. Fiction-Net:
Finally,
you've written about two female villains.
Have you considered creating a male
villain or are other women the real
enemy? Victoria
Routledge: I didn't
intentionally create female
villains - maybe I just know women better.
Caroline and Cress really represent the
darker side of Rachel and Kate's own
personality; they do the things they wish
they could do themselves, but don't
because they're held back by tedious
factors like niceness or fear or
consideration for others. And the danger
of having a male villain is that you send
out 'Here's the Love Interest!' signals,
which makes me put a book down
immediately. Same goes for a gorgeous but
bizarrely single male best friend. There
aren't any villains at all in ...And for
Starters, come to think of it. Everyone in
that is their own worst enemy, which is
possibly more true to life. |
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