Imogen Howson – winner of 2008 Elizabeth Goudge Award

Diane — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:40:04 +0000

Imogen Howson writes because she can’t help herself. Her passion is apparent within her creative writing. Also, Immi talks passionately about the subject. So much so, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to conduct this interview with her!

In July, 2008, at the RNA conference, Immi was presented with a trophy: winner of the 2008 Elizabeth Goudge Award. Congratulations to Immi!

Her beautiful prose speaks for itself – as does her blog! You can visit Immi’s website at Imogen Howson.com

In Immi’s words:

‘Born with a near-pathological hatred of criticism or rejection, Imogen Howson took up fiction writing and found that this ensures she receives plenty of both.

Nevertheless, she continues to write—mostly so she can play with re-imagined fairy tales and myths. Her stories are populated by shape-shifting panthers, mutated teenagers, malevolent sentient shadows, and heroines with beautiful names.

Imogen lives near Sherwood Forest with her partner and two daughters. Fortunately, none of them seems disposed to reject her. Training them not to criticise is taking longer, but she feels confident of eventual success.’

Why do you write? Because it’s easier than not! I’m sure someone famous said that, but I can’t remember who. The thing is, I have ideas and people and sentences come into my head, and they can’t get out any way other than me writing them down. So, really, imagine what the inside of my head would look like if I didn’t write…

Do you write everyday? If so, what is your routine? I don’t always write every day, but when I don’t I’m really sorry, because it’s so much harder to start again from ‘cold’. Right now I’m on a self-imposed deadline (a full-length novel to be finished by spring 2009) so I’m forcing myself to write every day, even if I don’t start until ten at night.

A routine…hm, yeah, I should get one of those! I work from home as well as writing, so everything sort of fits around everything else. Ideally, I do an hour or so of non-writing work first thing, after the kids have gone to school and I’ve had my first cup of coffee, then I get some houseworky stuff out of the way, then I write till lunchtime, then again during the afternoon. And if I don’t hit my daily goal, I write when the kids get home, and in the evening with the help of a glass of wine…

Where do you write? Ha, my nine-year-old read this question over my shoulder so I’m just going to quote her: “You write everywhere. You have your thingy at the kitchen table and you write there, and you have your thingy in the sitting-room, and you write in the conservatory, and you write in bed, and if you go out to a restaurant you write there, don’t you?” To which I answered yes. I assume by ‘thingy’ she means writing-pad—it’s not like I have a robotic writing-assistant or anything!

Where do you find your inspiration? Well, I often write re-imagined fairy tales and myths, so it’s easy to say how they were inspired. With other stories, though, it’s often an image that just appears from nowhere. For Fire and Shadow, my dark fantasy romance, for instance, it was the image of a girl standing barefoot in long grass with smoke rising around her. From which came my heroine, Fern, who’s a fire-starter.

Who are your favourite authors? Diana Wynne Jones, Marion Zimmer Bradley, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Ray Bradbury…deep breath…Jennifer Crusie, Madeline L’Engle, Mary Stewart, Elizabeth Goudge, Rumer Godden, Mary Renault, Georgette Heyer, Audrey Niffenegger, Stephen King.Lots of fantasy there, a healthy dose of romance, some of the really excellent children’s authors. I think what they nearly all have in common, though, is that they all do sensational descriptions.

As a writer, what are your biggest stumbling blocks? I write slowly. I mean really slowly, like carving each sentence out of rock. (Okay, maybe not quite that slowly.) So it can be exhausting reaching that daily word count!

What are your current projects? Right now I’m turning the short piece A Stolen Cloak of Feathers, which won the 2008 Elizabeth Goudge Award, into a full-length novel. It’s the story of a faery trapped in marriage to a human man. She can only be free if he raises his voice to her three times. When she has to leave her world, and her faery lover, to marry him, she believes he’ll do that within a few weeks—as most mortals do. But her husband is determined to keep his faery wife, and after five years she becomes desperate…

What are your goals for the future? A contract with a big publishing house, please! Oh, you weren’t offering?Well, everything I have published so far is too short to go to print—my short stories and novella are all out as ebooks—so my next goal is to write something long enough for print. I’d like to send my mother a book she can put on a shelf, you know?

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to write? Ha, I’m Ms. Dull and Predictable when it comes to this question. You have to read to be able to write. You have to read, and you have to think—you need to find out what works and what doesn’t, what makes you put a book down and what makes you stay up all night reading ‘just one more chapter’. And if you’re pursuing publication, you have to read what’s selling now, because tastes and language change, and as great as, say, Jane Austen is, she probably wouldn’t get published in the twenty-first century.Also, again if you’re pursuing publication, membership of a professional writers’ organisation can be invaluable. I generally write romantic fiction, so I’m a member of Romance Divas, a (free) US-based romance-writers’ website with an international membership, and of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, which is British-based—both of them fabulous sources of information and advice.

Immi has received some fabulous reviews and acclaim. I wish her every future success!

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Imogen Howson – winner of 2008 Elizabeth Goudge Award