The Night Watch is Sarah Water's fourth novel. Her third, Fingersmith, was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize in 2002. In 2003 Sarah was named Author of the Year at the 2003 British Book Awards. She was in Dublin recently to promote her new book and kindly took some time to answer our Techie's questions.
Did you enjoy writing the Night Watch?
Yes and no. I did in the end, it was a hard slog for the first couple of years; it actually took four years to write which is way too long really. That was partly because I was much busier with the publicity for Fingersmith, the whole year after it came out I was doing too much to get a good run at the writing. My writing time became far more fragmented. On top of that, it was a real shift for me, not just in the period, but more in terms of style. It's written in the third person and is much more character driven, it also has a range of stories and that slowed me down initially, and I found it quite challenging. There were times that I actually thought it was too many challenges, but once it did begin to work and fall into place I did really, really enjoy it. I got to really like the characters and started to feel really, really at home in that world.
Did you plan to write it in reverse? Starting in 1947 and finishing in 1941?
I wrote it in that order, but I do work towards a full draft and sometimes if I get stuck I leap forward. So I may well have written some of the last scenes earlier on.
Really, I would have thought you'd need to write 1941 first in order to know where the story was going to go?
Well I had to keep jumping back to check, so I would have done a lot of drafts. I think I spent too long writing the first part, it has the least pace, and when I had written part two things made more sense to me in part one. If I was to write it again, perhaps I would write it in chronological order.
I was so surprised that there was a dating agency in the book, I didn't think they'd have been around in the 40's.
Oh yes a marriage bureau, if you think about the 40's after the war especially there were so many divorces and so many relationships that broke down under the pressure of war it was probably a really lucrative business.
Your characters are all quite lonely - and the book isn't a happy book is it?
No it isn't a happy book is it? I knew that, I knew it was going to be a melancholy book about failure in a way and people being unable to get over things. That seemed to suit the period as well, going from the war, which was an exciting although traumatic time, to the post period where everyone was still reeling from the affects of war. I also wanted to write about older characters where everyone has a past and secrets, so that was all on the table when I started to write. It was a hard book to write because it was a sad world, everyday I was going back to a world of disappointed people and it was quite hard going. My second book, Affinity, was like that and it did cast a bit of a shadow over me.
Your portrayal of the characters that were involved in a same sex relationship was particularly poignant. Did you speak to people who were involved in same sex relationships in that era?
Well I did, but I looked more at lesbian and gay histories and novels from the time and it is something that everything comments on: the pressures of keeping the relationship secret, so much was at stake, you could lose your job, be thrown out of your flat, families would disown you, and for men it was a crime. People were vulnerable to blackmail and you could be deemed mentally ill, it was a very scary time. It was a much scarier time for gay people, funnily enough, than the Victorian period.
Your characters are amazing, particularly Stella in the Scrubs, were any of your characters based on true-life people?
I've read a lot of stuff about Wormwood Scrubs, and all of the people who wrote about prison life particularly in the 40's mentioned that there would be these quite outrageous gay men. Once they were in prison they had nothing to lose so they no longer tried to hide who they were and they really did get red library books and use them to rouge their lips, which is quite funny.
Four years seems like such an interminable amount of time, was there ever a point where you thought, 'this is just not going to happen'?
I did worry about that for the first couple of years. I stuck with it though, I am very loyal and of course I had put so much into it. I went to hear Margaret Atwood read recently and somebody asked her if she'd ever given up on a novel and she said that she'd written 150 pages of a book once and then given up. She got that far into a book and then abandoned it - that horrified me! Even if you had to transform the book, I think I'd probably stick with it. Four years is a bit barmy, but that was from the very first bit of research. I did do a lot of research, not just reading of books but wandering around London and talking to people.
Compared to writing Night Watch, I suppose Fingersmith was a joy to write?
Well actually it was, but when I was in despair over Night Watch I said to my friend, "Fingersmith was so easy to write," and she said, "remember that time you were in tears over Fingersmith?" I had completely blanked that out, my memory of writing Fingersmith was that it was really straightforward. I worked it all out in advance, lots of fun, great diabolical twists written in this wonderful era, but it clearly wasn't quite as easy as that. It has got a grimness to it, but ultimately it's an upbeat story and I think that does make a difference. So I think in my next book I'll go back to something upbeat.
Have you thought about the next book at all or will you take a break now?
I've got a couple of ideas, I've got an enforced break anyway because I'm doing so much publicity, so I won't start writing until all this is over, probably May or June of this year. I do have a couple of very vague ideas, probably based in the 50's.
Do you find the publicity for a book really tiring?
It is tiring. I would be lying if I said it wasn't, but what's most tiring is the travel: 13 cities in three weeks is exhausting! It's a lot of airports and a lot of travelling. I love meeting readers and people who have read the book.
Do you find journalists fixate on your personal life?
Sometimes, but not too much. It is always weird reading what people have written about you. Often they misquote you or have you say something you just wouldn't say, which is a bit unnerving. My working life is utterly on my own, which is great, it's how I like it. But it is completely different then to coming out into the world and talking about your book. Just because you've written a book, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are good at talking about it. You've done all your work in that one particular way and it's a very different sort of job, you almost have to interpret it or analyse it so you can talk about it, which can be interesting, but isn't necessarily what you're best at. Promoting it is hard but I want to do my bit for the book; my publishers work so hard for me, I want to help and do what I can.
Did you always want to write?
It sort of happened, I always enjoyed writing and I was doing a PHD thesis, which was quite like writing a book in a way. It gave me brilliant training, it gave me a daily routine and a competence in writing. To move from that to writing a novel was so liberating because suddenly I could just make things up! So I've always enjoyed writing, but when I was younger I never planned to write.
Did people's expectations of you change after the success of Fingersmith? Was there additional pressure on you?
It did feel like a pressure at first because of course it was exactly when I was finding this book hard. And when I was struggling a bit with Night Watch, people were saying, "when's the next book coming out?" which was really frightening. But as I just immersed myself in this book I kind of shrugged it off to a certain extent. It was scary though, because I knew there was a level of expectation the other books didn't have.
Do you have any recommendations for our readers?
Dickens has always been a big favourite of mine, and Elizabeth Taylor (not the actress), she was a British author who wrote in the 40's and is not very well read. I'm always trying to advertise her because I think she's a really fab writer. Angela Carter was also a big influence on me - she's not very well read anymore either. I've always been a bit of an Iris Murdoch fan too.
