If you have a question, please e-mail me at: Joanna@joannatrollope.com and I'll respond as soon as I'm able to do so. Or, you can write to me at: Joanna Trollope c/o United Agents, 130 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 5EU.
In the meantime, here are some questions that I'm often asked by my readers.
I have also set about answering reader questions about my latest novel
The Other Family here.
1. Where is your favorite place to write?
I could probably write anywhere now. An airport departure lounge, if I had to...I've written a lot of books on country kitchen tables, but now I have a proper little study in my London house, west facing, two windows, quiet and full of book muddle.
2. How do you choose your characters’ names?
I usually go through piles of newspapers or magazines until names pop out at me as recognisably right for a particular character. And sometimes, a reader has "won" the right, at auction, to have their own name applied to a character, or I come across a name, in ordinary life, that is striking enough for me to save it, for a book.
3. How many drafts do you go through?
About 5. I write in long hand, on the right hand side of an A4 pad, leaving the left blank, to tinker on. Each page gets revised 2 or 3 times at least. Then the manuscript is typed up, and I go through that 2 or 3 times too.
4. What do you wear when you write?
Ordinary clothes. I'm not a pyjamas writer, but nor would I wear the equivalent of a dinner jacket, which Ibsen used to do, out of respect for his craft....So I'm mostly in jeans and a sweater. And earrings, always.
5.Do you find it difficult to find a subject for your novels? Do you ever see a time when you will stop writing?
No and no. The situations will arise as long as there are men and women living and breathing, and writing, although no easier as time goes on, is so woven into the way I think and live now, that I can't imagine going on without it....
6. What is the best gift someone could give a writer?
Time…and before you make it as a writer, the means to live on, while you do make it.
7. What is your advice to people who want to write?
You know, I don't think one should ever resist the urge to write! It isn't really a matter of being published, but more of giving oneself the satisfaction of getting one's thoughts down on paper and being able to reflect on what one has written and maybe even polishes it. So my advice would be to start writing - for your own pleasure - and see where it gets you!
8. How do you define your writing? Many people compare you with Jane Austen.
Comparisons with Jane Austen make me twitch. She is a Great: I am a Good - on a good day.... I see myself as writing accessible and I hope, thoughtful, contemporary fiction for men and women, about the very dilemmas and situations that they encounter in daily life.
9.What is the first book you remember reading?
I can't honestly tell you. I was reading at 4, as most of us born before television were, so it was probably something like a Beatrix Potter - maybe "The Tailor of Gloucester" which is my favorite.
10.Did you always want to be a writer?
I always wanted to tell stories - long before I realised how crucially important story is, in all our lives. And I started writing very young, but I never dreamed that THIS would happen....!
