Today, I am delighted to have author Joanne Horniman stop by my blog to answer some questions about her novel About a Girl.
How did you come up with the idea for About a Girl?
A lot of ideas and images came together for me. There was a girl I saw on showery summer night in Brisbane running down the street with an electric guitar, and a boy; it turned out that she was the support act for a group we were going to see. I'm interested in young people and creativity. Then there was the incredible way I missed Canberra after coming back from a visit (my son went to study there and has lived there for a decade), and setting part of the book there was a way of being there. And then I wanted to write a short novel about love, inspired by Jack Kerouac's 'The Subterraneans' - a love affair that doesn't work out. And then my previous book 'My Candlelight Novel' had a relationship between two girls - it wasn't the main aspect of the book, just a part of it, and I thought I should do a book where it is the subject. Just a lot of things building on each other till I couldn't prevent myself from writing it. It's such a hard slog to write a book. There has to be a compulsion there for me. And the book has to grow in an organic way. In many ways it's more like gardening than writing - it's about nurturing and growing and not forcing things along. That's the kind of gardener I am, anyway.
Continue reading Interview with Joanne Horniman
How did you come up with the idea for About a Girl?A lot of ideas and images came together for me. There was a girl I saw on showery summer night in Brisbane running down the street with an electric guitar, and a boy; it turned out that she was the support act for a group we were going to see. I'm interested in young people and creativity. Then there was the incredible way I missed Canberra after coming back from a visit (my son went to study there and has lived there for a decade), and setting part of the book there was a way of being there. And then I wanted to write a short novel about love, inspired by Jack Kerouac's 'The Subterraneans' - a love affair that doesn't work out. And then my previous book 'My Candlelight Novel' had a relationship between two girls - it wasn't the main aspect of the book, just a part of it, and I thought I should do a book where it is the subject. Just a lot of things building on each other till I couldn't prevent myself from writing it. It's such a hard slog to write a book. There has to be a compulsion there for me. And the book has to grow in an organic way. In many ways it's more like gardening than writing - it's about nurturing and growing and not forcing things along. That's the kind of gardener I am, anyway.
About a Girl by Joanne Horniman (review copy) - I remember the first time that we lay together and I felt the crackle of her dark hair between my fingers, and closed my eyes and breathed her in, so that she became my entire world.
