An interview with Kate Thompson

Kate Thompson will be familiar to those of you who used to tune into Glenroe on a Sunday night for your weekly fix of Irish country soap. After years as a successful actress she decided to try her hand at writing. Living the Dream is her seventh novel, following the success of A Perfect Life. Kate kindly took some time out this week to answer a few questions posed by our Techie.

Was your childhood ambition to be a writer or was it a decision you made when you were older?
I had no ambitions as a child: I simply assumed that my long-lost parents, the King and Queen of Carpathia would come and claim me (strangely, they never showed up). However, I did have a vivid imagination. I invented a family called the Pattersons who lived under the pear tree in the garden for years, I won prizes for my stories in school, and I read voraciously. I guess all this vicarious living led me to the theatre world where I was privileged to earn a living pretending to be other people for many years. However, once I knew my best before date as an actress was imminent, I got a bit panicky. Since imagination was what I was good at, I thought I might be able to come up with a work of fiction. Once I got cracking, I realised that I'd missed my vocation.

Writing requires a huge amount of discipline - do you have a writing routine?
Yes. I've had to develop a routine, because otherwise I would write so hard that I'd knacker myself. When I first started out, 13-hour working days were not uncommon. If I'm in the West of Ireland I'll run a beach, potter and do chores before I get started. In Dublin, I cycle to the gym and work out quite hard. I have to, to avoid becoming a lardy-arse. I used to swim one hundred lengths a day until I developed an allergy to chlorine. Giving the pool up was hard for me because my mind would be working big time on the book as I lapped. However, the cross-trainer in the gym isn't a bad substitute as long as I have good music to listen to (flavour of the month is Lhasa's The Living Road). Once I'm home I make a big pot of coffee and get to work around midday. I finish around 7pm and usually revise for an hour or so until dinner's ready. In the past I would relax after dinner with a glass of wine and something undemanding on the telly (bring back Footballers' Wives!), but latterly I've been reading for research purposes every evening, everything from biographies of fin de siècle artists to accounts of film-making in the forties to obscure Tahitian journals.

How do you come up with your storylines? Are they based on true life incidents?
It's weird. When I was an actress people used to ask me how I remembered my lines, and I really didn't know how to answer that. Now that I'm writing, I don't really have a clue how I dream up storylines. They tend to come to me when I'm doing something mindless like the ironing or the dishes - or working out on the above mentioned cross-trainer. The Blue Hour came to me in its entirety when I was washing up one day, about an hour after I'd finished its predecessor. And a leather fedora on a stranger's doorstep conjured one of my sexiest characters ever - Pablo in Dream. Occasionally I'll draw on real life incidents or people (it's a great way of getting vicarious revenge!), but really imagination is the most important tool of all.

What sort of research did you do to write Living the Dream? Did you get to hang out on any film sets?
I'd done so much hanging about on film sets in my acting days that I didn't need to visit another one. Yikes - that isn't meant to sound blasé, but film sets are among the most boring places in the world. Honest! The real research was spent falling in love with the village of Roundstone in Connemara where I've been privileged to spend the last three winters getting under the skin of my characters and paying essential visits to Ballynahinch Castle, O'Dowd's pub, and Gorteen Strand. It will come as no surprise to Connemara aficionados to learn that Roundstone appears as 'Kilrowan' in the book, Gorteen is 'Lissnakeelagh', and O'Dowd's is 'O'Toole's'. And Fluffy the dog appears as herself.

Do you always know how your books will end before you start writing?
Pretty much. Having said that, characters often turn up unexpectedly and make their presence so strongly felt that they take the plot off on twists I hadn't anticipated: Jolie Fitzgerald in Striking Poses marched into my head, sat down, lit up a cigarette and refused to leave until I'd written her. Rory and Deirdre's story has been ongoing since my very first novel - It Means Mischief. I'm scared they'll end up on Zimmer frames! The book I'm currently working on is only four chapters and 25,000 words down, but it's clearly mapped out in my head and the epilogue is already written.

Mimi's Remedies is the name of a book from The Other Side of the Story by Marian Keyes - I assume you and Marian are friends?
We have been firm friends since the moment we met six years ago (A Perfect Life is dedicated to Marian). We e-mail each other drafts of work in progress, and Marian happened to send me an early draft of The Other Side of the Story as I was embarking on Living the Dream. I wanted a Chocolat type set-up for the movie that was being made in my 'fictitious' village of Kilrowan, and because Mimi's Remedies fitted the bill so perfectly, I asked Marian if I could borrow it. She loved the idea of Eva Lavery starring as Mimi!

The Irish female writing community has grown over the last five years. Why do you think that is?
We're very supportive of each other - much more so, I've been reliably told, than writers anywhere else in the world. When I started out I received incredibly generous support from Marian and Cathy Kelly and Deirdre Purcell. I like to think that I've handed that baton on. I'm a big believer in paying it forward.

What writers do you admire?
I admire any writer who sits down in front of a keyboard or an exercise book, writes 'Chapter One', and keeps going.

What was the last good book you read?
I've just finished re-reading F Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, and fell in love with it all over again. The inter-war era was so quintessentially glamorous, and I've always been fascinated by the Fitzgeralds and the Murphys and the Hemingways, who 'discovered' the French Riviera. I read to escape, mostly - I'm not a great fan of gritty 21st century realism - so I'm also enjoying the Lonely Planet's Travel Book, which I got for Christmas. It's the ultimate escape book - a great big glossy journey through every country in the world. Take a look at Tahiti - I need to get there (for research purposes, of course).

What advice would you give to someone who wants to write a novel?
1) Don't tell anyone that you're writing, bar one or two discreet and trusted individuals to whom you can show your work in progress. You want a reader who will accentuate the positive because any negative feedback or criticism can be really, really harmful.
2) Read. Don't confine yourself solely to the kind of books you want to write - read everything.
3) Carry a notebook. I've lot count of the number of times I've come up with an idea so brilliant I assumed I didn't need to write it down. An hour later it was gone from me.
4) Find your own voice - it'll come with practise. Editors are always looking for new voices - their slush piles are teetering with wannabe Dan Browns and Helen Fieldings.
5) Reward yourself every time you have a couple of thousand words that you feel proud of. I know that this sounds camp as crystal, but I always keep a bottle of champagne in the fridge to celebrate a landmark - be it the end of chapter one, or the halfway stage, or the day when I type 'The End'.
6) The best advice I ever got was from Deirdre Purcell, and it was this: "Persist, persist, persist."

Are you working on the next novel (our readers will be dying to know!)?
Thank you - I do hope readers are dying to know! The stand-alone sequel to Living the Dream is called Sex, Lies and Fairytales (due in October 2005). It's currently at proof stage, and I'm expecting to see the jacket soon, which is always very exciting. Readers who took a fancy to Pablo in Dream might be glad to know that he and Cleo return in S,L&F, as does the redoubtable Colleen (who was one of the most enjoyable characters to write ever!) Deirdre and Rory make cameo appearances because it seems that fans of the books can't get enough of them - and I confess that I'm inordinately fond of them myself.

Also, after many months of research, I've embarked on novel number nine. It's set to be my most ambitious book to date (fingers crossed) since it spans three generations and three continents, and I'm having an absolute blast writing it. Wish me luck in Tahiti…

For more info, please check out www.kate-thompson.com

Books by Kate Thompson
Going Down
Living the Dream

Also mentioned in the interview
The Other Side of the Story by Marian Keyes