According to her grandmother, Emma started writing stories at the age of four. She wrote fiction throughout her childhood until she penned a short story that won her a place at Oxford University to read Experimental Psychology.

It was another ten years before Emma summoned the courage to write again, in the mean time distracting herself with such things as becoming an information architect for websites, dabbling with being a designer dressmaker and working for a magazine publisher. She even went to such lengths as becoming a Psychology teacher for four years in the madness of convincing herself that she wasn’t a writer.

Much to the relief of her long-suffering husband, she finally stopped messing about, faced up to the fact that not writing was like trying not to breathe, and wrote a young adult novel set in post-apocalyptic London. Since then, she has started her own web content business, whilst chronicling her heroic journey towards the fabled lands of publication on her blog.

Nowadays, Emma knows better than to avoid writing.

1. What do you love about writing?

The relief.

If I don’t write, I get tangled up in my own knots. I get grumpy and fretful, I sleep badly and can’t settle to anything. My poor husband ends up living with a troll. I’ve worked hard on my writing over the last few years, and one of the most important things I’ve learned is to recognise those signs. Life is so full that I have to be careful not to let too many days go by without writing some fiction – I write web content for a living so writing fiction is a luxury – no, a necessity. Otherwise I go a tiny bit crazy.

After the relief, it’s the going to other places and getting to know the characters that I love the most. The cast of my first novel live in my head with me; I couldn’t imagine life without them now. At the moment another book is germinating, and the protagonist keeps popping up in my short stories. I love that too – I never know exactly what or who is going to turn up. Writing short stories is like going on day trips to exotic places; everything is different there and I never know who I’m going to meet.

2. What is your favourite short story and why?

A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury.

Why? Well, it was the first short story I read that made me shiver all over for one thing. It’s a great concept (I’m a huge sci-fi fan which helps), beautifully executed in a technical sense and so efficient without being impoverished. Just… amazing. Even just writing about it now has made every hair of my body stand on end. Delicious. Every person with an imagination should read it at least once before they die.

3. What has been your favourite story to write to date?

That’s a tough one. I wrote a story called Seeing Him Again that won a competition so I have a particular soft spot for that one. It just flowed out of me in an hour. I felt perfectly in sync with it from beginning to end. It was a gorgeous experience in and of itself. But there is also one called The Owner which I really enjoyed writing too. When people sign up to my short story club they get that one as a thank you straight away. So I guess it must be my favourite!

4. Where do you get your inspiration for stories and characters?

I’ve heard about writers keeping notebooks for when the muse slaps them on the head, or pouring over newspapers for a gem to polish up into a story. Neither of these work for me.

I like to start with an opening line, or a central theme / concept – and it’s best when I haven’t thought of it myself. Then I approach it from all sides. I let myself mull over possible permutations – the bit of my brain that codes websites likes this bit. ‘What if’ thoughts feature a lot, and there is lots of daydreaming about potential permutations. That usually produces a seed of a story. Then the characters just… arrive. I spend a bit of time with them in my head for a few days; they just settle in and get comfortable. Then when the idea is better formed (I still have very little insight into how exactly that happens) I sit down to write and just watch the story like a film in my head. It’s my job to write it down as best I can, the hard creative work happens in a deep part of my mind that projects up to the surface, like a cinema projector.

Perhaps an example would be good? Let’s take my favourite; The Owner, written to a competition brief: A story about ‘uncertainty’ in 2,500 words or less. The first thing I did was consider what came to mind easily when I thought of uncertainty. What situations usually create it, how does it make people feel, act, wish, fear etc. Then I took all of those and threw them out of the window. I knew it would be easy to write a story involving the discomfort of uncertainty – too easy. Boring. So I let those clichéd ideas have their half hour and then got down to work. What could create a situation where uncertainty was the thing being craved, rather than suffered? Then it struck me; if someone always knew what was going to happen, they would miss the feeling of uncertainty, they would miss the days that unfolded, rather than being followed through knowingly. The story grew from there; into one about a man who had a supernatural ability to know the consequences of every possible action. This man was beyond bored, and was desperate to feel uncertainty again, he craved the feeling of risk, having a life devoid of it for years had taken the excitement with it. Then I just saw him, standing, hands behind his back, looking through a viewing window down into a casino. I knew him, inside and out; he was a casino owner, voyeuristically participating in the visceral uncertainty of the gamblers below. Then he sees the perfect solution to his problem, and, well, you’ll have to read it!

5. If you could meet any published writer (dead or alive) who would it be and why?

I can’t quite decide between Ray Bradbury and H.G. Wells. I think I would love to go for a walk in a park with Ray Bradbury, eating ice cream and being thrilled about writing together. I would love to embrace him at the end of it, kiss him on the cheek and thank him for the hundreds of hours of pleasure he has given me. Yes, that would be lovely. H.G. Wells on the other hand I would love to have dinner with, somewhere refined. I would wear an evening gown and he would be smartly dressed. We would have a conversation unlike any had in the restaurant before, and I would bask in his brilliance. How wonderful… Oh! But then there’s Stephen Fry, who I have loved since the age of 13, and Michael Marshall Smith who wrote Only Forwards which I adore. Sorry, that question is just too hard!

Websites

Post Apocalyptic Publishing

Short Story Club