You have written that Harold Fry was inspired in part by your father.
For me, writing is about finding the links between myself and the outside world. In researching the character of Jim, for instance, I spoke to a number of people about OCD and whilst it is not a condition I’ve experienced, it reminded me of other things I’ve felt that had similar beginnings or resonances. I think I tend to find people in my head that I want to explore and maybe all of them have an element or two of me in them. I write about people I glimpse and then I imagine the rest. I write about the things I see when I look out of my writing shed or walk through the fields. I am lucky enough to live on the brow of a valley. But – as with Harold Fry’s story – I stepped out of our house and drew on what I saw. How much of the novel is based on real places and people? I sat here every day and I wrote and rewrote and rewrote. Otherwise, the writing process was very similar with both books. It was only this time, too, that I thought about splitting the story between two tenses and two periods in time. It was only as I began to write it this time around, for instance, that it dawned on me that it wasn’t a contemporary story and neither was it an urban one. I have played with different versions until I found this one. Things I couldn’t understand have become clearer. Sometimes I have even tried fitting them into other stories, but it never felt right because this is where they belong.Īs with most things, the story has grown over time. I could always see Byron and Diana and I knew I needed to find out more about who they were and what happened to them. The idea about the cost of perfection and an accident that changes everything, as well as the central characters, have all been loitering in my head for many years. The truth is, I have been thinking about Perfect for even longer than The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. How did your process differ in writing the two novels? But Perfect was written within a shorter space of time. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry began as a radio play and then developed into the novel it is today after many years of writing and revising.
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