John Banville

I’m John Banville, my apartment in the centre of Dublin, it’s my office really. I don’t live here, I come here every morning. I sharpen my pencils, I stare at the wall, I read a few lines, do anything other than start to work but eventually one find oneself working. It’s a strange, dream-like process.

My desk faces the windows but not much point, really, I haven’t cleaned them for about five years because I never look out, there’s nothing to look at out there, everything is inside my head. I write with a fountain pen on paper in these rather beautiful handmade books and then I transfer it to the computer so it’s sort of Stone Age meets the Technological Age.

If I’m writing as Benjamin Black, I can work in other places. I began writing as Benjamin Black when I was in Italy, staying with a friend of mine. Didn’t think I could do it but one Monday morning I just started and by lunchtime I had become Benjamin Black, but if I’m writing a John Banville book, I have to be here, I have to be here with my own things, I have to have my own piece of wall and my own piece of filthy window not to look out of.

It was odd when I started writing a Benjamin Black book, I carefully got out my fountain pen and opened a notebook and began to write longhand and I got about a quarter way through the book and then I realised that it was too slow, so I went over to writing directly onto the screen, which was an odd sensation for me, but that’s how I work. If I were to try to do that as Banville, it would be disastrous, because Banville has to write very slowly indeed and fountain pen on paper gives me just the right pace, it holds me back, because the computer is too fast, it thinks faster than I do.

Well, the main thing at my desk is my notebook which I write in, my manuscript book, a very beautiful object I think which unfortunately I keep blackening pages of it, but there’s no other way of doing it.

All my talismans are here, things that have accumulated, most of them I don't know where they came from, they just seem to have migrated here from somewhere else, but I’m very fond of them. I’m fond of this little statue, who stares at me accusingly as I work, asking me why on earth I think I’m a writer and what I imagine that I’m doing. I like her scepticism. I like my artists mannequins, they remind me of my characters, I can do anything with them, they’re infinitely malleable.

My bonsai tree is a new acquisition. It rather worries me. I feel that I’ve got a pet or even a small child standing at the corner of my desk that I have to take care of, water and lavish love on.

For me, writing is like breathing. I wouldn't know how to live if I weren’t doing it. This room is my ideal, I can’t imagine that I will ever write anywhere else other than here. I’ll be carried out in a box, still writing, my hand twitching with a fountain pen.