The sun shone on Hay last week.  It was our first time at the festival and we had a grand time. The deck chairs were out on the lawn and there was a great line up for the last few days. Of course our phones wouldn’t work. And so I couldn’t access email or the internet. But once I’d climbed down from the hotel ceiling I realised that perhaps this wasn’t such a bad thing. Although slightly enforced, it was a total break from work.

David Crystal

On my bookshelf I have a well-thumbed reference book called ‘Rediscover Grammar’. I’ve had this since sitting my A-Levels and it has proved extremely useful over the years. It contains everything from noun phrases and subordinate clauses to adjectives and personal pronouns. The book is written by linguist David Crystal and I was thrilled to discover that he was speaking at Hay and promoting his new book, ‘Just a Phrase I’m Going Through: My Life in Language’. I realise that may sound a little dry but I really like this stuff.

The format for the majority of events was pretty much the same. The writers read from their books, answered questions from an interviewer and then took questions from the floor. David Crystal’s talk was different. He spoke on his own, engaging the audience with funny stories and later took questions. In fact in places it was more of a performance than a talk. He spoke well, engaging the audience and making them laugh. Well, all except Lord Levy who was already preoccupied with landing helicopters.

Crystal described his book as a cross between a memoir and an autobiography. Personal recollections combined with factual content. It all starts, he explained, with a phone call. And went on to describe how he found himself in some of the world’s troubled spots. He spoke of shootings, assassination attempts and of sex. Of Dublin, Israel, Chile and Brazil. And of the Forensic Phoneticians who worked on the infamous Jack the Ripper tape. All fascinating stuff.

The talk ended with a mock phone call from the British Council suggesting a trip to the Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

More information: www.davidcrystal.com

Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson had some interesting insights into the ‘process of writing’, though she shuddered at using the phrase. At the start of a novel she doesn’t know the plot or how it ends. This ‘discovery’ is what she enjoys most about writing and explained that if she already knew the ending then there would be no reason to write the book.

Atkinson talked about an ‘unconscious’ process and of ‘writing through her fingers’ and how the novel comes together as she types. From start to finish her novels usually take about two years to complete.

Genre isn’t something that Atkinson thinks about when writing.  This is something for other people to decide.  She went on to talk of her dislike of the whole publishing process and confessed that if she could write without having to be published then she would.

Kate Atkinson read from her novel ‘When Will There be Good News?‘

Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters is one of my favourite writers. There’s something about her writing. She transports you to a different place and time. I think it’s in the detail. She researches thoroughly, from buildings to food to clothing and the way people speak. Research, she explained, is one of the most enjoyable parts of writing.

Her latest novel, ‘The Little Stranger’, is set in post war Britain. It’s a novel about class and the decay of the upper classes. It’s about the end of a way of life and of new beginnings. It is also a ghost story or more precisely a ‘haunted house story’.

With the exception of ‘The Night Watch’, Waters meticulously plans her novels chapter by chapter. She makes decisions such as who will be telling the story at an early stage. However, like Kate Atkinson she talked of a kind of discovery in her writing and a sense of ‘finding’ the characters. She also talked of a consciousness of genre and of her novels ‘being in dialogue’ with other books.

More information: www.sarahwaters.com
Sarah Waters talking at Hay: www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2009/may/20/hay-festival-sarah-waters

We went to other events of course but for me these were the highlights. All too soon we found ourselves back on the motorway with books, book bags, mugs and an embossed Moleskine (yeah we did). The 3G icon on my phone signalled the end of the weekend.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 10:11 pm and is filed under Out of Levy, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.