By Elen Sentier

Why do I do it? Well, I’m utterly addicted! It has nothing to do with money and I’d still be doing it even if nobody ever read any of it. But the joy of somebody reading the story, is so good. If they actually contact me and tell me they enjoyed it then that is a serious rush!

I can’t not do it, I can’t not write! It’s a huge burning itch and longing that I cannot satisfy any other way. Even if nobody ever reads it I have to do it but, of course, I want others to read it and hope they get the same thrills (or better) that I got in the writing of it. Otherworld requires me to write and makes my life hell if I don’t. They also help with the material and ideas and even with ways through the difficult stodgy moments when I really feel I’d have done better to take up road-sweeping without a brush!

Writing is hard, difficult work. Don’t let anyone kid you it’s a walk in the park, it ain’t!

First it’s a struggle to pull the basics of the story together from the idea that sparked me off. This can take months to come properly clear. But, at the same time, I need to get in with the characters ASAP, they help to pull the troy together. I’m very character-driven in both writing and in reading so I begin to befriend them (even the bad guys need befriending!) and work with them, follow them through the back-story they need to show me.

Some people talk about “playing god with people’s lives” but it’s never like that for me, I don’t feel in the least like god. Characters are wondrous to me, I have to empathise with them. If the characters leave me cold then I can neither write them nor read them. This means spending and giving time to know them and make friends with them, allow them to show me who and what they are. When I’m writing I’m often stunned by what’s coming out of my fingers on the keyboard. It’s often quite unlike the ideas I had over the morning cup of tea before I began writing. They act differently to how I’d expected and, invariably, it works better than if I tried to squish them into what my brain had thought up. I am walking and talking and experiencing with them as I write – and I love it.

So part of the joy of writing for me is about getting to know new people, and being surprised and delighted by them too.

I love description of nature and, sometimes, of towns and cities too though less often. Books like Robert Macfarlane’s “Wild Places” and Roger Deakin’s “Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees” inspire me. On the fiction side I love Terri Windling’s “The Wood Wife”, Le Guin’s “Left Hand of Darkness”, Ellis Peters Cadfael series and Herbert’s “Dune”. All these authors take you to, show you, where the story is happening. Their descriptive powers transport you there, you see through their eyes. When I’m writing I’m transported too, the actual writing of a “road trip” or adventure, or even just a walk through a house, happens for me as I write. I’m off on the journey, travelling shapeshifted into the character.

I also enjoy the research involved in writing, it’s fun discovering things. Part of every story always involves visiting places that will be the places in the story and getting the feel of them right into my bones. I’m currently reading about quantum entanglement, mycorrhiza and the travels of other nature writers and, at the same time, heading off alone into the wild lands of Dartmoor, spending days on the tors and in the deep wooded valleys with the characters. So my time’s not just spent hammering away at the computer but takes me out into nature and deep into the worlds of other writers.

So I write because I must. And I try to make sure each book is as good as I possibly can get it and that’s seriously hard work. No longer are you borne along by the wave of the story, now you have the hard grind of reading and rereading your work, refining it, listening to it, hearing it in your head to make sure it flows well for the reader and there are no stubbed toes. Editors are invaluable here but you also have to listen when they say something you think you adore doesn’t work – and that usually hurts!

Writing is a way of life for me, a way of living a very full life too, a life full of excitement and newness, exploration and discovery, and of continual self-growth. You grow with every story you tell, if that story is to work at all. Each one pulls things out of you didn’t know were in you. You are a snake who sloughs her skin and a caterpillar turning herself into butterfly-soup with every book you write.

I watched Ursula Le Guin’s acceptance speech for the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the National Book Awards. The thing she said that stood out most for me was, “… we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art …” Yes, yes, and yes again! I’ve never found books produced as a commodity to fit a market in the least satisfying, they taste like dust and ashes to me. Books that have driven their authors to write them, and then hone them to the finest metal, taste different. They are nourishing and feed the spirit.

What a marvellous job! I love and there isn’t any other way for me …

Find out more about Elen's novel, Moon Song, here.

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