josephinefeeney.co.uk

NO.

That’s a difficult one…

NO.

I was born in 1956. You can work it out. I know, I know, I don’t look my age. What do you mean I look older?

(At this point, the teacher or librarian will interrupt and say, “I think these questions are a bit personal. I am sure Josephine would like to hear some questions about her writing…”) so,

I didn’t realise that there was such a job as a writer until I was about seventeen. We didn’t have any writers on our street – most people worked in factories: the men in engineering; women in hosiery. I thought that being a writer was something you did in your own time, like stamp collecting. 

When I started teaching, I started writing seriously. I wrote short stories for the year 11 classes who weren’t entered for any examinations. I was inspired by writers like Stan Barstow and Bill Naughton who wrote about working class people. My classes loved the stories I wrote but I never said that I had written them. I loved teaching but I loved writing even more and it sort of took over my life in the end. 

I liked reading comics more than books, especially the Bunty. I didn’t really get into reading until I worked part-time in a library at the age of fifteen. Then I worked my way through the novels of Thomas Hardy – a wonderful storyteller. When my children were small I read to them all the time. They loved the Jill Murphy series about the Large family and any stories about not sleeping through the night or being mischievous in the day. I learned a great deal about writing for children through reading to my son and daughter.

Everywhere. From my family, from strangers on the bus into town, from the train; from listening to other people’s conversations; from reading the local newspaper; from the stories my children tell me about their lives at school; from my author visits to schools and libraries. I’m always looking for new ideas. But… ideas are the easy bit.

Ideas are the lovely easy bit at the beginning of writing a story. There’s a great deal of writing and re-drafting to shape it into a perfect novel, short story or play. Sometimes, when you’re working hard on a story, a little voice in your head says, ‘why are you writing this?’ and you forget about the feeling of excitement you might have had when the idea first came into your head. That’s why ideas are the easy bit.

Good question. Quite often when I’m stuck it’s because I’m tired, mentally tired, so I take a break away from my story. Most days, at about midday, I go for a swim at my local leisure centre. It really helps me to concentrate throughout the afternoon.

If you’re in a classroom and you’re stuck in the middle of a story then stop, put your pen down, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Then read through your story and edit it for a few minutes.

I love reading, cooking, eating, playing the accordion and helping out on the allotments. We have two allotments – a vegetable plot and an orchard so in the autumn we spend a lot of time picking, crushing apples and pears.  I also support Leicester City and even if I’m not at the match I can hear the cheers, when they score, as we live close to the Walkers Stadium. I also swim every day.