I’m named after Jane Austen’s Emma, and I’ve always been able to relate to her. She’s strong, confident but quite tactless.
Writing stories is my way of scratching that itch: my escape from the claustrophobia of individuality. It lets me, at least for a while, live more than one life, walk more than one path. Reading, of course, can do the same.
And as the years flowed by, some villagers told travelers of a beast and a beauty who lived in the castle and could be seen walking on the battlements, and others told of two beauties, and others, of two beasts.
Sometimes when persons say definitely it sounds actually less true.
Nowadays, ‘invisibility’ was supposed to be the big problem, but the way I saw it was, all that mattered was to be visible to yourself.
We used to call it her Cinderella complex, because often when she had agreed to go out in the evening she would be seized by panic and announce that she had nothing to wear.
People move around so much in the world, things get lost.
I must say, in the case of “Room,” both the book and the film, I don’t think being a lesbian author held me back at all.
Identity politics are wearisome; you don’t want to go on speaking for any one group as a writer.
I think I know what it’s like to have a family that the outside world sees as peculiar or lacking.
I think I read Susan Brownmiller’s classic book called “Femininity” when I was about 16. So yeah, it’s been part of my mindset since a very early age. To me, what’s crucial is to tell women’s stories but also to tell them in a way that is fearless.
There may be certain genres that men dominate, but fiction not so much. The question of prizes is tricky because there are so many prizes.
In the publishing world, most editors are probably women. So I don’t see the publishing world as a male-dominated one, especially within fiction.
I was not exploiting any real individual’s story in writing ROOM, of course I was aware that my novel, by commenting on such situations, would run the risk of falling into those traps of voyeurism, sensationalism and sentimentality.
I’ve been in a long and happy relationship for 22 years and it’s never inspired me to write anything. It’s too good – nothing to say. Problems, conflict, that’s what makes for good stories.
Writing is nearly always a matter of finding whatever your brain needs to trick it into being creative, and in my case, a tiny little bit of fact just seems to work.
I read a lot of social history. If I’m in an art gallery and a picture intrigues me, I immediately write down the title and I google it. I do a lot of googling and looking out for good stories. I can almost smell them sometimes.
When people write to me with stories, they are never ones that work for me. There’s something mysterious about which ones catch you.
I think ultimately the film ‘Room’ is a kind of hymn to motherhood and to the everyday heroism of parents who find their smiles in terrible times.
What’s crucial about being an executive producer is that you stay in the loop, information-wise. They have to share all their major decisions with you.
If you have written something that the film people want, like a book, it does give you a way in.