Emma Shelton interviews writer and University of Kent alumni David Mitchell, finding out some interesting facts about the University’s early days, and some profound tips on writing. Listen to or read the interview below.
So how does it feel to be back at Kent ?
Great. For a long time I had a “you shouldn’t go back” kind of philosophy about my home town, where I grew up and even where I went to college here. Perhaps that’s the same healthy propulsive force that you have when you are younger, or maybe we are hard wired that way, to make sure you go out into the world and do your own thing.
Then middle age comes knocking on the door, and you’re actually rather curious about where you’re from, not in a sentimental way but you sort of feel like it’s rather healthy to go back and have a look at where you were as a kid, a teenager, a student, and see if it’s changed and how it hasn’t.
It’s good to go back and see where you’re from. There’s a sense of closing a circle.
When I arrived at St Pancras, I felt that as the train was leaving, there was my 1987 self just sat across the aisle, coming to Canterbury for the very first time; it would have been the same train, but obviously 1987 quality rolling stock, and nothing nice to eat within 20 miles of any station. So I was looking at my 1987 self, sitting across the aisle thinking “god, you’ve got a lot to learn mate” but then I could also feel my 2033 self, sat behind me thinking the same thing for me. That’s how it feels to be back
How was Freshers for you? What was that experience like?
It was so typical. I joined about 11 different clubs, and discovered the Keynes Duck Appreciation society was essentially a drinking club where they take your money and spend it on beer and you never hear from them again. I joined the bell ringing club, because I had always fancied a bit of campanology.
I went a couple of times and I just used it in my book I’m working on now. I’ve got a scene in the bell loft of a Kentish church. It’s taken 20 years to use that night but I’ve finally learned it.
It’s a strange time. You are an 18 year old male and have the body of a man, more or less, but you still have the mind of a fairly scared mid teenager away from home for the first time, and in many cases, it was for me.
All that self-discovery I had. The potential is massive, but the quantity of that potential that is actualised is so small. However smart, however sorted, however sussed you are, you are still only 18. Bar disaster tragedy or angst, you’re going to be alive for 70 years, but even [by] those 18 years, in relative terms, you have only been an adult for minutes
It’s quite an intense time; intense with self-discovery, some of which I only worked out [in] retrospect.
As most of us do.
Live life forwards and understand it backwards
What was your course like? You were studying English Literature.
It was good, it was a nice balance. (…)
I did Anglo-Saxon literature with a professor over in Keynes.
I’m really grateful for that. It often works out like that, it’s not your main course that turns out to be the most nutritious in the long run. I encourage people to be eclectic.
So now, how do you feel? How has your education at Kent influenced your career now? Did you expect to be where you are now when you started here at uni?
I would occasionally and very unrealistically fantasise that I would be where I am now, without a clue about the realities involved with it.
I learnt I was not an academic at Kent. It was good training to be a novelist in a way.
I was sometimes shepherded into looking at and thinking about the foundations of lit, of English lit, of western lit. And in my own really really small minute [in the] 21st Century. I am working in the same tradition now. You can’t be ignorant of the 18th cent novel, that would be terrible.
This was the place where I was encouraged and gently coerced into thinking about the inventors of the form that I now work in. And I am so glad I was.
There was an academic called Roger Hardy, who passed away, he was an American and lived in Rutherford somewhere I think. I did Shakespeare with him, I’ve got really good memories of him too.
He sensed I wanted to get off the beaten track and encouraged me to look at the oddball plays. He called them oddball plays: Timeon of Athens, Cymbeline (not so oddball), Pericles, really is an oddball play, that’s a drug adult play, that is really trippy, really is.
The chaos theory was very new at the time and I wrote this bonkers essay about the chaos theory and Othello. I mean please?! He could have torn it to shreds and embarrassed me in front of the whole seminar group, with ‘What is this?’ and I probably deserved it. But no, he didn’t. He gave me 90. Not because what I wrote particularly deserved it, I’m sure it didn’t, and I’m so glad that essay no longer exists but he was using all the instruments at his disposal to encourage me to combine things that weren’t ordinarily combined. I knew next to nothing about the chaos theory and not a lot more about Othello.
100% for originality.
No one would have been so arrogant as to think that you could. It was sort of a creative writing mark that he gave me. I always remember him so fondly. He used to eat oranges all the time because he was always on a diet.
How do you work now as an author?
I have kids, so whenever the hell I can.
The major piece of advice for people reading this is don’t hang around for the circumstances to be right before you can write. It never works like that.
45 minutes before I pick the kids up from school, I have to break the back of this scene now. Or the plane is landing in two hours and between now and when it lands, and not always in business class, I get my notebook out and I’ve got to work out why I can’t get this damn scene written, and define these problems and write my way through them.
That’s how writing works.
It’s writing despite and not because of.
Whenever I can and under whatever circumstances I can.
You have to evolve a working technique that lets you do it now and under any circumstances, however un-literary they are.
Do you ever have Writer’s block?
No, I don’t know if I believe in it. I believe in mental breakdown, that’s real. Anything short of that…
I can only speak for me of course, but all you do is write yourself a letter about why you’re stuck and you can always work it out: it sometimes requires a painful level of honesty. Usually some variation of “this core idea is crap”. That’s why I’m blocked because it’s not worth writing.
Or more common: this aspect really isn’t crap, it’s beautiful but it doesn’t belong here. You’re proud of it, it’s one of the best things you’ve ever written, and that’s true of any level you’re at. It’s really good but it’s blocking the story: A and B can’t both exist in the same story. One of them has to go.
Do you ever find yourself taking that material and using it elsewhere?
Sometimes you can, it depends of the size of the blockage. The bigger it is, the more likely you can recycle it as a short story.
I have a file for this on my computer: ‘scenes not needed here’. And I put them all in there. It doesn’t feel like you trash them. You know what though, I almost never open that file ever again. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
You must have a moment when you write something and it doesn’t feel right using it again?
It tends to be ideas. Those scenes are often so [specific] for the context of that story that to put them in another story doesn’t work. Bones of them you can.
Big pieces of my first novel were recycled from my Zero novel, the one I wrote that didn’t get published but sent to publishers (…)
Sometimes mistakes are scaffolding to build the real thing or a mistake is a bridge to an island you otherwise wouldn’t have known the existence of, even if the bridge gets washed away behind you.
With all these little bits of stories, are you someone who jots them down on loads of notebooks or do you use a laptop to type them up?
I find myself unable to make any headway against a blank screen. I can make headway against a blank piece of paper. So I start with notebooks. It tends to be unwise to take your laptop when travelling not only because of risk of theft but because you look at the screen rather than the place. Whilst when you can take your notebook and still look at your notebook and look at the place.
Cloud Atlas was nominated for the Man Booker prize. What did that mean to you? Was that your dream as an author?
It was. It was kind of a fantasy. As Julian Barnes said before he won it, it’s “posh bingo”.
Your publishers love it and in the short term, it’s good for sales.
There are cautionary tales about the people who win the booker and never recover.
The Booker is often really good for the book, it’s not necessarily good for the writer. I would advise writers on the long-lists and short-lists to learn to not to think about it too much. It also wrecks your summer. Long-list August, short-list September, winner October. Imagine! You wake up in the middle of the night, and you’re on the long-list, and there’s this little gremlin going “you might win the Booker, you might win the Booker.” “No f*** off, go away” “You might win the Booker…” I view the whole thing quite ambivalently.
Now that said, if it did happen to me, you would be hearing a different tune.
Don’t think about it too much. Don’t review, and don’t get to heat up about competition. Reviewing earns you enemies, unless you are saying good things. Leave it to other people to earn the enemies. It’s not your job as a writer. Concentrate on writing, on your own work instead of mouthing off about other peoples.
Competition. It’s an artificial construct. Of course it’s nice when you win, but that victory is paid for by the losers and everyone has a wonderful time from the outside looking at that competition.
The biggest question you should ever be bothering your head about is: how can I make this damn book work? Anything bigger than that is not your work. Competitions are bigger than that. They involve the world and the media and large networks. Don’t go there. Be good at not looking at that stuff.
Make your work so damn good that they’re falling over themselves to sign you up, that’s where you should be putting the energy, not clever eye-catching schemes. Just make it really damn good from the first paragraph. Concentrate on the screen and the notebook and in time you will win those prizes, in time you’ll get the agent. Just do this first. This is the horse that needs to go before that cart. You’re the author, just think about the horses.