To recap (and copy and paste what I've already said!): At the very tail end of December, I found out that one of my favorite authors was speaking at a local bookstore midway through January. By chance and serendipity, I’d worked with the woman in charge of PR for the owner of said bookstore, and in that completely random way that awesome, genius ideas have of popping into your head when you least expect them to, the thought popped into my head: What if I try and get an interview with him? (Him being the author of course.)It seemed like a crazy idea, one that most likely wouldn’t lead anywhere, but, why not give it a shot, right? Being the end of the year, I’d been reminiscing about the me I used to be, who was ballsy and blindly went for stuff, without any fear – or even thought – of failure. So, in a huff of gumption and what-the-hell-itis, I sent off an email, along with a little prayer to any gods, faeries or angels that were watching, and I went on my way.
Longish story shorter, one person sent me to another, then another, and by the end of it, I was corresponding with the authors' PR peeps, and, than two weeks after my crazy idea, I got the interview! I got a half hour interview with the awesome, talented, charming, and utterly wonderful Jasper Fforde!!!
There’s a pretty funny story about how the interview started, and a none-too-interesting one about dragging my feet with the whole transcription part of the process, but, with only a very small amount of rambling more, I present the complete, very lightly edited – more polished really – interview with the fantastic, delightful, inspiring, and absolutely lovely Jasper Fforde.
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A quick note: any words in the squiggly {brackets} are places where I couldn’t quite understand, in the recording, what was said.
(As I may have mentioned here six or seven hundred times, I participated in National Novel Writing Month, last November. One of them any awesome parts of NaNoWriMo, is the section of Pep Talks – new ones every year, and that show up in your emailbox throughout the month. This year – well, technically, last year, Jasper Fforde contributed an amazing pep talk and I started off the interview by asking him about it…)
Jasper Fforde: It turned out well actually. I was really pleased with that. It’s very rarely that I actually write something that I’m actually pleased with, because I can only see the faults and errors, but the thing about National Novel Writing Month, is that they called me in July and said, “Would you do a thousand words?” and in July you go, “Oh, what, November? That’s {years} ahead!” And you go “Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.” So I put it off and I put it off and literally, within the last two days, I went, “Oh, blast, I have to write this,” and I just sat down and wrote it, in half an hour. And I went, “Oh, that kind of makes sense, actually,” and I sent it off and that was it.
So I was quite pleased with that, because it was genuinely how I felt, and one hopes that that comes across. Especially as advice to would-be writers – practical advice – not “Go to the dark place and explore the inner you and expound on how you felt about the relationship with your father, before he left and bla, bla, bla.” And you go, “No, no, no! Just get the words down, for chrssakes! Just get the wordage there, and some of them will be together and they’ll look really good together and remember that! And then just do some more.” And it’s real practical stuff.
I think the National Novel Writing Month is a brilliant idea. I think it absolutely is. Absolutely fantastic.
Francesca: After having completed it, absolutely, I agree. And I kept remembering, in your pep talk, how you said you wrote 60,000 words and only 27 of them in order.
JF: –And only 27 of them in the right order, yeah. I’m joking, but, yeah.
F: But when I was sitting there and writing and feeling like what I was writing was the biggest, most steaming pile of crap, I thought of that and, “You know what? So long as two of them are okay, then that’s fine.”
JF: Oh yeah. Writing is like any other skill. When people say, “Oh, he has an inherent skill for this,” I think what you actually mean is, he’s actually smart. And smart people pick up skills quicker than people who are not so smart. But the actual inherent skill in a specific walk of life or endeavor, I think is complete nonsense. You just have to put in your hours of practice. And, if you take the 10,000 hour mark as a pretty good rule of thumb, the hours that someone spends writing for that one month, is a good chunk towards those 10,000 hours. And it’s all valuable work.
F: What happened with your novel? The one that you wrote?
JF: It’s still around. It’s still gathering electrons on my hard drive. It hasn’t been published. It’s not bad, it could do with a bit of work, but eventually I’ll get it out somewhere.
F: Was that the first big writing thing you did?
JF: No. I think it was probably about my fourth. When you have an idea that comes fairly packaged, fully packaged in your head, and you go, “Oh this would work out really well,” then it’s a lot easier to get down. I think I was working on Zorro at the time, and I’d spent 3 to 4 months in Mexico, thinking about writing this book, and when I got home I just went, “Right, okay, off we go,” and {phroom!} that was it.
F: And then it just came out in a big glut?
JF: Yeah, like that. I think it was in between starting and finishing The Eyre Affair.
F: So, right in the middle of writing The Eyre Affair, you wrote–
JF: I wrote two other books, yeah.
F: Wow! JF: I had a little trouble with The Eyre Affair, trying to make it all fit together and work. It took a while; it took about three or four years.
F: Three questions just popped into my head with that. Let me go with the first one – when you first come up with, for example Shades of Grey, or the Thursday Next series, there’s so much detail in those worlds. How much do you plan ahead? How much do you know before going into it?
JF: It varies from project to project. With the latest Thursday book that I’m writing at the moment -- TN6 I’m calling it – I decided that I wanted to write a plan, because I’ve never been able to write plans in the past. So I spent a month and a half writing out a plan. And that was quite good actually. I quite enjoyed that and a lot of ideas came along. But, even since I wrote the plan, I’ve had other ideas that I know are even better and that I’ll just add on at the writing stage. The way I write is, I start off with the basic principles of what’s going to happen – what is the main thrust of the book – and then it’s a sense of constant improvement. Endlessly, endlessly, endlessly editing, re-editing, and just going through the prose. And still adding little bits here and there and thinking, ‘Oh, that would be fun,” and why not add this and that and the other and before you know it, it all starts to sprout and blossom and all these little ideas firing off this way and that way, and it just comes together in a curious manner.
F: So, just diving in and trusting that it’ll all work out?
JF: Yeah. If I built houses in the same way as I build books, I’d put the chimney pot up first, and then I’d do a window on the first floor, and then I’d do a little bit of basement and then I’d paint the spare room, which hadn’t been built yet. It’s that kind of thing: you just sort of {toss} around. And, I don’t generally start right at the very beginning. Often, if I have a really good subplot, I’ll actually write six separate sections of the subplot, and then I’ll start stirring them together or adding little bits on the end. It’s a very eclectic way of writing. And then I’ll suddenly have an idea, in the shower, or driving down the road, and I’ll come back and I’ll write a paragraph – which is about this idea – and then I’ll expound on it all day. I’ll have 3 and a half thousand words, and I’ll go, “Ok, I think that’s around about here in the book,” and I just plant it in there – [though it] might get moved later. So really it’s a very sporadic, sort of time-waste-y way of working and it’s not efficient in the least.
F: But it seems more enjoyable…
JF: It suits my way of thinking and writing. I think probably because I’m a bit impatient. So it suits my firing off in all directions way of writing. But sooner or later I have to actually button down to getting it all hanging together. I’m snipping off all the little extraneous bits, which are very fun, but just detract or drag – start dragging the eyes. Because you can have too much stuff; you can have too much detail. And quite often I will write a book with at least three subplots that it doesn’t need. And I’ll look at it and go, “You know? This is just too much, and it just slows the story. And this chapter is bogging, for this reason and, it’s just got to go.” And then it’ll just be {ripped}out, and that’s it. So quite a few ideas don’t make it into the original book, but I’ll keep them on file, and I’ll put them I later books.
F: Is that how the Thursday Next series – did you know it was going to be a series when you started?
JF: No. The Eyre Affair was a standalone book. There was no sequel to it at all. So the whole notion of the BookWorld which appears in book two was totally unthought-of in the original series. But, as it turned out of course, the BookWorld and the Jurisfiction element of the Thursday Next series is, I think, the best bit about it. This imagined BookWorld that {one} can travel into and move amongst books, is, I think, the main thrust of the entire series. But that was completely unthought-of when I wrote the original book.
F: What about the new one, Shades of Grey – it’s the first in a series. Did you know that going in, or was it the same thing?
JF: I think so. It would be a bit of a waste of effort if I were to spend such a huge amount of time inventing this world, and then to abandon it, almost fully formed. And so I thought, “Well, no. There’s a lot more here.” And like the BookWorld and the Thursday Next series, you don’t know where this book is going to go next. And there’s an awful lot that can happen. Eddie’s world is actually quite – although the country is very open and empty and there’s not much going on in it, it’s a very closed community. They can’t do very much. There are rules and regulations to keep them having these very limited, mediocre lives. But there must be something outside. There must be something going on, there must be some reason why this bizarre world has come about. And there are all sorts of little clues that there is a greater world outside Eddie’s immediate environment. And all [of] that can be explored. It takes place in only two live villages and two dead villages in this very large country which is clearly the United Kingdom, but what’s going in the rest of the world? Is everybody like this? What happened? What was the Something That Happened? This is stuff that we can expand on in later books.
F: When you first dove in, was it bits and pieces? A subplot?
JF: I feel I first dived in to this thing by writing down the basic rules of engagement within this society and the hierarchy. And the rules themselves are actually pretty basic. But they just become more complex because people are subtly trying to subvert them. I think you can have very simple rules, but you can have very complicated, unintended consequences. And it is the complexity that the world becomes once you people it with real, live people with their own problems, incentives and everything else, that it does become massively, massively complex. So, I started off by writing the basic rules, and then those rules led on to other rules, because I started asking questions: If everyone is on the social strata, and if you see purple you’re higher than if you can see red, well, then I think there must be some social strata’s within social strata’s. Class within class. If you see more red, you’re better than someone who can see less red. All of a sudden it becomes more complicated. And if there is a red prefect and you’re a high red, and you have a daughter who sees quite a lot of red, then you would want a red son – a very red son – to get you even higher. And all of a sudden, you have this mechanism for social climbing. Which changes everything. It’s like changing completely re-writing social rules and everything else. But, no matter what you do, it all comes out looking despairingly familiar, which I rather like. The more complex I made it, and the more different from our world I tried to make it, once the people started doing their human thing, it all started looking very, very familiar. And I like that. A lot. But it does come about through a series of experimentation. They’re humans like us, with their usual foibles and everything else.F: Is there any one character you relate to more?
JF: I kind of enjoy Eddie, I must say. I like to think back to myself, being twenty and not being hugely confident. I wasn’t the social climber he was, but all he wants is to be a good citizen. And being a good citizen is embracing mediocrity, and being unambitious, and not causing trouble, and trying to regain the lost hue for his family, by marrying someone who clearly is unsuitable, but whose father runs the Stringworks Factory back in Jade-Under-Lyme, and that’s really where Eddie is at the beginning of the book. He’s no one special at all, although he can see rather a lot of red. But that in itself is not particularly exciting, because reds are at the bottom of the pack anyway. He could make prefect, but then he moves to East Carmine, and he bumps into Jane, and he suddenly falls obviously, hopelessly in love with her, despite her clearly, almost psychotic, tendencies. And he realizes that, perhaps there’s something more, and there are questions that should be asked. He’s always has been a bit of a questioning sort of person – he has an inquiring mind – but I think he’s very much kept it at bay. But here there’s something going on, and before you know it, he’s fallen into a whole series of events that lead him to have to go to High Saffron, on this {recon/trek} And all sorts of things happen to him that lead him to realize that this society is not actually as perfect and wonderful as perhaps he is led to believe.
F: I love all the little details, when Eddie’s describing what makes a good citizen, that to us would not be a good thing – like how sycophantic they are – and yet, they’re good in this society. It’s almost an exaggeration, so clearly not our world, and yet you can still see the parallels.
JF: Oh yes, absolutely. But I think, what was nice is that it’s a dystopia novel, but there’s no … armies of darkness. There’s no big computer somewhere, no robotic police force. This is a future dystopia in which the oppressive factors are the very people within the society themselves. And I like that. It is their very incuriosity that is actually, essentially, caging them in this dystopia. But it was very important to make it a bit, icky. And certainly to try and twist the morals that we have today, and not the morals, obviously, in Eddie’s world. They accept things that we find unacceptable. And I think it’s quite important to do that as well. And some things perhaps in the world, you look at and think, “Well it’d be nice if everyone was always polite to one another, and no one shouted, and no one would dare hit anyone, and it’s just a frightful thing to do.” But then of course there are other things in the world that you go, “Well, actually no, that’s really not very pleasant at all,” and people have come and accepted it.
F: Like the dress code. I remember mentioning to someone the other day, living here in Miami, where it’s a somewhat beachier community, “Wouldn’t it be nice if people dressed better?” As in, fancier. And then to see in the book that there are standard outfits.
JF: Yeah, dress codes, absolutely. One could argue for hours and hours about whether dress codes should be allowable. We do have dress codes: you wouldn’t go into a restaurant here, [with] dirty shorts and a grubby t-shirt. So, there is a dress code. But as little as 20, 25 years ago, if you tried to go into a restaurant wearing blue jeans, they could say, “Actually, sir, we do require you to wear proper clothes.” I was at Milan Cathedral, and they have a dress code for entry there, that you couldn’t wear shorts or a short skirt, and they were literally turning people away. Like the church police were saying “No, sorry, God doesn’t like you, dressed like that. You’re going to have to go away.” There are dress codes in mosques, very strong dress codes in Mosques, and Japan has a very strong dress code. So it is there – it is with us – it’s just different.
F: In the acknowledgements, you wrote that this book (Shades of Grey) was more difficult to get onto paper than you anticipated. How so?
Jasper Fforde: This is a departure for me. For the last seven books, I’ve essentially been mining the collective memory, and the collective experience, for my source and my jokes, and a lot of stuff. When I use Miss Havisham driving a fast car and blasting away at grammasites, there is a good joke there, but I’m only contributing a third of it. Charles Dickens is giving a third of it, and you are giving a third of it. So it’s really a combined effort. Mining the stuff that’s already there [and] mining the stuff in readers’ heads, because Miss Havisham is quite straight and fixed. And when I {change} it around, then the gag is there.
I’ve been doing that for seven books. And I thought, “Gosh, it would be fun to do some proper noveling for a change. How hard can it be?” Quite hard, as it turns out. I decided [that] I’m going to write my own characters, in my own situation, using my own little world. Still keeping it very Jasper-esque, but play with new ideas, new situations, new ways of telling the stories, in much the same way as I did with The Eyre Affair in 2002. Here is a different way of looking at a crime thriller. … It’s a different way of telling a story. I think essentially, what I do is find different ways of telling perhaps the same story. And here I’m telling a post-apocalyptic, post-catastrophic story as a social satire, but in a different way. And, these things take time. I’m still learning. We’re always still learning, as authors. Over the past two years hopefully I’ve learned some useful new skills about writing that would stand me in good stead, whatever I do in the future. Whether it’s more Thursday, more NCD, or something totally different, or Shades of Grey 2.F: Has writing this book, and learning those new skills, changed how you’re going to approach the next Thursday or Shades of Grey books?
JF: I don’t think so. Subtly, perhaps it will. But I still approach Thursday in pretty much the same way. I don’t know. Until I write them and then stare at them and think, “Ah, okay, I wouldn’t have probably done it that way.” But it’s difficult to quantify. I’d have to run my life again without writing Shades of Grey and then see how it changes, and you can’t do that, so it’s impossible to say. … I mean, I hope so. I hope it will improve the prose, and make it funnier, and the books will be slightly better. That’s always the hope, isn’t it? With any author: write better books. It’s a good credo to work to.
F: Better than the opposite.
JF: Oh, write worse books. No, don’t want to do that. Write better books.
F: Do you know what the end is going to be? Of Shades of Grey?
JF: I have a vague idea. It’s like the Thursday adventure which went off in an entirely unexpected direction. I don’t actually know, and it’s quite exciting, because I’m having ideas – extra ideas now – for Shades of Grey 2, which take it off in entirely separate directions. But it won’t be in the same way as The Eyre Affair, which was about Jane Eyre being kidnapped. When my publishers asked me for a sequel, they thought they were going to get the same thing, but with Pride & Prejudice. ‘The Pride & Prejudice Affair,’ and then it would be a similar sort of thing. But that’s not how I work. I go off totally on a tangent, just to keep everybody guessing, and to be as unexpected as possible. So, as the series progresses, of Shades of Grey, it will hopefully contain as many twists and turns and unexpected changes and turnabouts as the TN series had.
F: Do you know when little things – for example Friday appearing at the end of the first TN book – do you know when these details will come into play later, as you write them?
JF: When I was writing The Eyre Affair, I thought that I’d introduce this whole notion of the ChronoGuard, and, obviously, I knew that Thursday and Landon were going to eventually have children, and I thought, “Well, why don’t I just put in Friday there? And just pop him in?” Because, even if I never use it, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a throwaway. But if I do use it, then the whole thing has a connectivity and a thread that runs through the entire series that makes it all much more cohesive, as a large body of work. Rather [than] being little separate adventures that are entirely unconnected. Or perhaps only connected by characters.
F: And it must have been a nice moment when you realized ‘A-ha! And this ties back into Friday’...
JF: Yeah. And how else can I get Friday involved? Friday is heavily involved in Book 5 in the series (Thursday Next: First Among Sequels), in a very similar kind of way. You just add these little quips, little gags, throughout the series, and then you can exploit them at a later date. Or not. I just scattered them all around the books. And eventually they make it work. When I’m writing another Thursday book, I go through the series, and have a look at things; If there are any unresolved plot-lines that I’ve started off somewhere, I go, “Oh, OK, I can use that. Yeah, that would work…” and then, all of a sudden we’ve got a little going.
F: Have you ever bumped into any plot points or anything that contradicts what you’ve got coming?
JF: Yeah, there were a couple of points in The Eyre Affair which didn’t work with the rest of the series, and I had to explain them away a bit in Book 2. Hopefully I got away with that. I also did a whole croquet thing I wanted to really make work, but I don’t mention croquet until the second book, and I wanted to mention it in the first book. I think there’s a passage that I had changed, from the paperback version three onward, so that the national sport – which was originally pelota, a very dangerous game played in Basque country, – [was] changed to croquet. So in the paperback, American version, it says croquet now.
And certainly with the new book, I wanted to really change the face of the book world {BookWorld?}, to offer new kinds of dramatic possibilities. So I’ll have to do a little bit of a rework there. But I found that my readership is extraordinarily elastic in what they’ll accept within the framework of a Thursday book, so, I think I’ll get away with it.
F: [Changing gears,] What is your idea of a successful book?
JF: One you can’t put down really. You find it a satisfying read or you’re entertained, or it’s not boring. I think that’s the minimum entry requirement, isn’t it? You read it and you go, “oh this is brilliant!” And you get to the end of the chapter and you go, “I’ve got to read the next chapter!” A little bit of a page turner. I think if you can hit all bases. There are several different markers that you can say are the hallmarks of a good book: it makes you think, it makes you laugh, it’s a page turner, it’s very satisfying, you feel rewarded because you paid attention or you’re just in front of the narrative, because you’re getting it. And if you can hit as many of these markers as possible in a book, then obviously it’s going to increase its interest to readers. Different people like different things. Some people only read books because they want to read fantastically precise English prose, and are not particularly worried about pace or plotting. For those people there’s a whole literary cannon of work out there– modern and classical – which they would find perhaps more interesting than my books, for instance. But, it’s {what people like} And that’s why there’s a billion books published every single year, because lots of people have different tastes.
F: Is that how you gauge your own books? As in, what makes a successful book, as you write it? Or do you have a different way of looking at it?JF: No. I think you’ve just got to listen to your inner ear. And the voice inside that says, “It’s not really working, is it Jasper? Perhaps if you shorten it by 10,000 words, it would work a bit better. Pace seems a bit flabby. There’s not much atmosphere, why couldn’t we just put a bit more description here, add some rain, [etc.]” It’s these sorts of things. It’s very difficult to quantify. It’s stuff that you really work on, on a sense of your own,initiative really. And you just add them [up] and then it looks right.
F: Trust yourself basically.
JF: Yeah, I think the skill is knowing, is having a sense of what’s missing, or a sense that it’s not right. Being a strong critic. Being your own worst critic – or best critic – I think is vitally important to an author. Because if you read it and go, “Mmm, this isn’t working, but I don’t know what. Oh never mind, I’ll just leave it, it’ll be fine…” It won’t be fine. You’ve just got to listen to that voice. And if the voice says, “I know you spent two months working on this chapter, and you really want to use this plot-line,’ [but] if it’s not working, it’s got to go. And that’s it. You just press the delete key and it’s gone. And you have to do that. It gets worse before it gets better.
F: There’s an expression, in film and TV: killing the puppy. It’s something like that…
JF: Yeah, that’s right. You have to kill your babies. It was William Goldman, who wrote Adventures in the Screen Trade. That was one of his favorite ones. You have to kill your babies. And, yeah, you do. Sometimes.
F: Did working in film help the way you look at a story? The way you come up with a story?
JF: I don’t really know. I think seeing films is probably of more value than actually working in films. But the huge value of working in films is that I managed, for twenty years, to work with a very, very bizarre assortment of people. And watch some extremely strange and sometimes aggressive character clashes, and diplomatic spats, and all sorts of coercive ways of people getting to do things. And also travel a lot, and in that respect, it was hugely useful. Because I would think that any self respecting author should obviously see something of life before they try and write about it.
People say, what advice for writers? Well, write, basically. But I’d also say, get a strange job where there’s a lot of strange people. Go work in McDonald’s somewhere in the central part of town, and you’ll share your shift with 7 or 8 very, very strange characters all there for very, very different reasons. And if you did that for three months, you would have a lot of very, very interesting observational skills. Always assuming of course that you have those observational skills, but if you want to be an author, then I think you’ve got to have them, really. Or work for an undertaker. That would be a very interesting one, wouldn’t it?
F: Ooh, slightly disturbing, but interesting. A little macabre.
JF: Yeah, a little macabre, but quite interesting I think.
JF: Yeah, that’s right. You have to kill your babies. It was William Goldman, who wrote Adventures in the Screen Trade. That was one of his favorite ones. You have to kill your babies. And, yeah, you do. Sometimes.
F: Did working in film help the way you look at a story? The way you come up with a story?
JF: I don’t really know. I think seeing films is probably of more value than actually working in films. But the huge value of working in films is that I managed, for twenty years, to work with a very, very bizarre assortment of people. And watch some extremely strange and sometimes aggressive character clashes, and diplomatic spats, and all sorts of coercive ways of people getting to do things. And also travel a lot, and in that respect, it was hugely useful. Because I would think that any self respecting author should obviously see something of life before they try and write about it.
People say, what advice for writers? Well, write, basically. But I’d also say, get a strange job where there’s a lot of strange people. Go work in McDonald’s somewhere in the central part of town, and you’ll share your shift with 7 or 8 very, very strange characters all there for very, very different reasons. And if you did that for three months, you would have a lot of very, very interesting observational skills. Always assuming of course that you have those observational skills, but if you want to be an author, then I think you’ve got to have them, really. Or work for an undertaker. That would be a very interesting one, wouldn’t it?
F: Ooh, slightly disturbing, but interesting. A little macabre.
JF: Yeah, a little macabre, but quite interesting I think.
F: Going back to good books, what’s the last good book you read?JF: The book I’m reading at the moment, which I’m really enjoying, is called Fly by Wireby William Langewiesche. It’s a book which is an account of the ditching of Flight 1549 into the Hudson River last year. And it’s just fascinating. It’s brilliantly written – he’s the most astonishingly good writer – you could make it into a stage-play, it is so good. It covers all the aspects, not just the political climate within US Airways, and deregulation, which is all about politics in the United States, and the dwindling power and respect that airline pilots now command. Where once they were sort of magicians strutting around in their uniforms, and for many years they had huge salaries {to match}, but now, with the advent of technology, they’re being sidelined to, really the role of coach driver. It’s social, it’s political and everything. And then there’s a big section about geese, and what were Canadian Geese doing there, and where are they from. When they got the aeroplane, they actually did DNA testing to try and find out where these things came from, and eventually they find out where, and then they talk about testing engines to talk about how much of a bird it can ingest before it can explode. And also the politics between Boeing and Airbus about fly by wire. And all that sort of thing, which is a very big political hot potato at the moment, because the battle between Airbus and Boeing is going to be very, very big over the next ten years. Boeing are in trouble at the moment, they have basically three entire countries bankrolling them, so, it’ll be very interesting to see what happens. So, with all the characters, all the politics, all the technological aspects of airplanes – because I love airplanes – it’s the most brilliant read. Very, very exciting, very, very interesting.
F: Okay, just a couple more questions: You are on the Eggs Benedict tour, seeking the best Eggs Benedict… so, related to that, what is the best breakfast you’ve ever had?
JF: It was in Singapore. I was in Singapore doing part of a book tour, over in the far east and in Australia., in about 2005. And I’m trying to remember the name… Oh, I haven’t got it. It used to be the German social club, and now it is a hotel. This beautiful old colonial building. Their breakfast was amazing, because you could have Bread and Butter Pudding – which is a really good British pudding – and it was exceptionally well made, and dim sum, on the same plate. They had this incredible fusion of post-colonial British puddings, and far eastern cuisine. In Singapore. Because Singapore is like a fusion of all these different bizarre, culinary things. Anyway, the breakfast there was just exceptional. We stayed in the breakfast room for about two hours, and it was just brilliant.
F: That sounds like an interesting combination…
JF: Yeah, you could have anything on your plate. It was great. Eat as much as you want, buffet. It was brilliant. And then you could have pancakes and a bit of bacon, and then a bit of rice and some stir fry as well…
F: And then someone needs to roll you to your room because you can’t move or eat anymore.
JF: Yeah, basically.
F: Why do you write?
JF: Well, primarily it’s my job. I’m a professional writer. [And] I chose to be a professional writer because it’s something I really enjoy doing. I mean, the best way to choose your career, of course, is to find out what you really like doing, and then make it pay for you. And that’s what I did with all my careers. I’ve never done anything that I didn’t enjoy doing. When I got into the film industry, I always loved movies. I wanted to be in films since about the age of ten. I always liked photography so I got into the camera department.
You find what you want to do, what you enjoy doing most, more than anything, and then just make it pay. When I was in my late 20’s and I discovered that I really enjoyed writing, [I] did it as a hobby for ten years, and then I made it pay for me. And now I’m a professional writer. So, that’s how I got into it, but the reason I do it, is because I love it. It’s a hobby and everything, but I also get paid for it, because I’m a professional writer. I mean, obviously I don’t do it simply for the cash, although I do do it a bit, obviously. I just couldn’t think of doing anything else to be honest.
F: What is the best thing about being a professional writer? And the worst thing?JF: The best thing about being a professional writer… You really are the captain on your own ship. And when you’re actually doing the book writing part of it, rather than the discussing with publishers over what it’s going and when it’s going to be, you’re in there, in the wheelhouse, and you’re just captaining this strange beast of a book out of the {I tried to figure out what this word was, but I just couldn’t! Sorry!} and onto the page. And that’s probably the most exciting and fun bit. –And when you get a really good idea, that is exceptionally good fun. When you suddenly hit upon a notion that you find very, very exciting and new and different and bizarre. And that’s great as well.
The worst thing about being a writer? … I can’t really think of much to be honest. What could there be bad about being a writer? … I suppose the bit I least enjoy about it is, there’s a period when the book has gone away to the publishers, and the copy editing is done, and then there’s a three and four month wait in which I can do other things, obviously, but I will be constantly wondering whether I could have improved the book, made it better, or that people are going to read it and go, “Oh my god! What a load of shite this is! What the hell did he think he was doing?” So I think that’s probably the worst bit about it. Is the kind of little worry that writers get – well, I don’t know, maybe they don’t. I do – that I just didn’t do it well enough, or I could’ve done it better, or if I’d spent a little less time monkeying around with my hobbies – cars and aeroplanes – that I could have done it that little bit better. So that’s probably the downside for me.
Oh, and bad reviews. Yeah, they’re nasty. Don’t like that.
F: Yeah?
JF: Oh yeah. You get a hundred good reviews and you ignore them all, but you get one bad one, and it’s all you think about for weeks and weeks and weeks, and it can change entire books. You’re thinking, writing the new book, you go, “Now what was that comment in that review for the – some tiny little magazine somewhere with a circulation of 9…” And that’s the thing that sticks in your head.
I tend to avoid all reviews. Unless someone says, “Oh look, this is a really good one.” I tend to avoid reading any bad ones or looking for any bad ones, or on Amazon, I stay away from the reviews section. I just try to stay away from that really.
F: I think you could probably go crazy looking at all that stuff…
JF: But only for a while. Afterwards you just get, “Oh, for Gods sake … I was writing for ten years, and no one wanted to publish me, and now I’m published.” And then the arrogance kicks in, and you go, “Oh what do they know?” And off you go again. But it always sticks in the back of your head.
F: Is there anything in particular, as a writer, that you’d like to accomplish?
JF: I think I’d like to write a really good book one day. I mean, that is the goal I suppose: To write a great book that will still be in print in a hundred and fifty, two hundred years from now. It’s a bit of a nebulous dream [though], I have to say. But it would be wonderful to write a classic that everybody reads and you go, “Well it’s on the ten ‘must reads’ of classical 20th century fiction.” That’s the goal. I’m not sure it’ll ever happen, but it’d be nice.
F: But maybe it’s like with artists where, after they die is when they get really popular…
JF: Yeah, but that’s no fun.
F: I know.
JF: I want to know now.
F: Well, as a fan, who’s read all of your books, I’d say you’ve written a bunch of good books.
JF: Yeah, but they’re not classics in the way that you can look at something like Catch-22. I’m talking about going up there amongst giants. It’s a very difficult thing to do. If you’re asking me about the ultimate goal of an author, I suppose, that. But I’m very happy with just entertaining people in my own little way. I’m absolutely fine with that. I go and give talks and people say, “You know, I love your books, and they helped me get through a bad time in my life.” Well, that’s done it for me. I’m there. You’ve fulfilled what I think I could possibly have wanted. And never mind about writing the classic. That’s terrific.
Someone spoke to me at a talk, and they said, “I just have to tell you this story, because it’s really important to me,” and he said: “You gave me my grandmother.” And I went, “Okay, how does that work?” And he said, “Well, I’m 16, and she’s 92, and we’ve never had anything to talk about. Until now. I never had my grandma before, and all of a sudden, we’re chattering away. And I have my grandmother, and that’s down to you.” And I go, “Well, that really is good.” And, yeah. I’ll take that. That’s nice. That’s a good feeling. So yeah, I think, {if I can} bring people together and make people want to read more, or look at the world in a slightly different light, or maybe go through life with a slightly jauntier stride than they’ve been before, then I’ll certainly, gladly, humbly accept anything that comes my way in that regard.
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If you want to know any more about Jasper Fforde, be sure to check out his very fun website, although you might want to free up your afternoon and get some hot cocoa, because there's a lot there to read and enjoy.
If, for some reason you'd like to read the original parts of this interview, they are here (part one), here (part two) and here (part three).
Again, my deepest thanks to you, Gentle Reader, for reading this, and to Jasper Fforde. For gracing me with his time, his wit and his words. And I know that I, for one, have had a much jauntier step ever since I had the fortune of conducting this interview! Thank you!!!
:) xo