Justin Cartwright

My day starts with a big shot of coffee made out in my little kitchen in the yard there, and then I sit down and sort of ponder, look around, think gosh yes now what am I gonna do today?  Here where I work is basically a builder’s yard and this was the entrance to the builder’s yard. And where I’m sitting actually was where the carts originally came in.

I turned it into a study and a library. I’ve filled it with things that I like, I’ve got some African artefacts which remind me of my origins and Cameroonian figures and this particular table is Cape Dutch style, it’s a very old table. It’s made of two cape woods. And so although I don’t live in South Africa I sort of have a kind of emotional attachment to it, certainly to the landscape and to the artefacts.

In another room I have a Dogon door and they were doors intricately carved, they have the same motif on them, they were used for granaries up in West Africa and each sort of figure represents something. And they’re sold as tourist things and I’m not altogether sure I’ve got an original, but I like it. And on the shelves I’ve sort of had the books arranged in some order, so that reference books are closer to hand and ones I’m not going to use instantly are further away.

I’ve been greatly influenced by some major Americans, Updike, Bellow and Roth in their time and I wouldn’t say they were models for me but to some extent I like, I like the sense that they’re really, well certainly Updike a very realistic writer and he had the maxim that his job was to look at the ordinary and by close examination make it extraordinary.

I’m actually seven chapters in on a new book and it’s sort of a state of the nation novel.

I write in an exercise book, although I type properly, touch type, but I start in an exercise book and I’ve always done that, just through that door over there, there are about 75 exercise books of novels I’ve written, god knows how many millions of words that is.

People say yes but isn’t it quicker to do it on a computer? It isn’t quicker for a novelist, cos I probably only writing a page or a page and a half in a day and for me it’s easier to go back and see if particularly referring back to an earlier chapter, it’s much easier for me to look at the exercise book.

I revise those by hand and then I’d start typing and I revise it as I type onto my computer and then I’ll print it out and revise it again, so it has about four processes before I finally submit to the publisher.

The urge to create is obviously something that comes from somewhere. And it’s not strictly rational to be honest. But all I can say is that when I wrote my first novel that was accepted and reasonably well received, it changed my life.  Didn’t make me rich by the way, but it certainly made me feel there was something I could do well.