Five minutes with CWP tutor Rosie Chard
Rosie Chard is a novelist, freelance editor, writing coach/mentor, landscape architect and English language teacher. She has published three novels and has been a tutor on the Creative Writing Programme for many years. Working with Jacq Molloy, she is now leading a new course – the 10-week Introduction to Creative Writing starting in May.
When do you first remember wanting to be a writer? I started writing when I moved to the Canadian Prairies with my family fifteen years ago and had a chance to do something different and reset my life. Being a newcomer in an unknown and remote place can be a strong catalyst for starting to write.
Tell us about your initial journey to publication I was living in Canada when I started sending out the manuscript of my first novel to agents and small indie publishers after the writer-in-residence in Winnipeg (Poet Chandra Mayor) encouraged me and a writer friend (Novelist Liz Jensen) helped me write my first query letter. One publisher offered me a book deal but had no space in their schedule for at least two years so I took a risk, said I didn’t want to wait and continued submitting. After many subsequent rejections I received another offer on my fortieth submission and published my first novel with a wonderful indie publisher in Edmonton, NeWest Press, who also went on to publish my next two novels.
And tell us about your most recent novel The Eavesdroppers The kernel of the idea came to me when I visited the sound mirrors (massive concrete dishes – relics from WW2) at Lydd on the Kent coast and clearly heard someone whisper something on the other side of the lake. This led to a story which explored the perils of eavesdropping, especially when you don’t know when to stop.
What’s the most challenging aspect of writing? For me, it’s the keeping track of a story as it starts to loop and cross-reference itself. I find that this unexpected folding back and reconnecting, which often occurs at a subconscious level, is one of the most challenging yet exciting aspects of writing a novel.
And the most enjoyable? I love all the stages, the thinking, the speculating, the developing, the testing, the editing.
How does teaching creative writing impact your own creative process? There are so many ways. Teaching something is the best way of learning about it oneself, so I am constantly delving into new territories, trying to broaden my knowledge. I learn something new from my students every single time we meet.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given about writing? Don’t get too impatient with your characters; it can take time to create a whole new person. When I wrote my first novel for ages no-one would speak, it was only action, description and backstory, but one day I found their voices. It was just a question of giving them time to develop, of spending time with them as they did ordinary things until the qualities that made them unique started to show themselves.
Do you have a specific writing process when creating long-form work? It varies but I do very specific research. For Seal Intestine Raincoat I studied the Inuit clothing in museums in Oxford and Winnipeg, for The Insistent Garden I repeatedly visited and experienced two magical gardens in Oxfordshire, Snowshill and Rousham, which were important both to the setting, theme and structure. For The Eavesdroppers I asked friends living in various countries to send me anonymised fragments of dialogue that they had overheard during their lives and never forgotten, and built a useful database. I like to do loose speculative plotting and write a working synopsis as I go along. I also like to use graphics to help visualise structure- storyboards, skeleton plans and even paper models. I can’t start anything without a paper notebook and real pen.
What one book, fiction or non-fiction, would you take to a desert island, given that you already have the complete works of Shakespeare and religious text of your choice? That’s difficult, but I would choose Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle which I first read many years ago and will never forget.
What’s are you reading at the moment? Unusually I’m reading two brilliant doorstops at the same time- Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting and Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead.
What are you working on at the moment? A novel inspired by stop motion animation. I’m interested in how my protagonist, an amateur animator might subconsciously explore a supressed memory through the creation of a short stop motion film. My research has led me to make a series of short films with an App on my phone which have released surprising clues about my character, spontaneously emerging from the plasticine figures as they are animated.