Writer Interview: p.d.r lindsay

Welcome to my ninth interview with a New Zealand writer. April’s featured writer is p.d.r. lindsay, and yes, I meant to type small letters. Read on to find out why this is so important and how a group of independent authors can do great things.

She writes historical fiction novels and has sold over a hundred short stories to magazines, soundzines and literary journals around the world, including markets such as ‘The Atlantic Review’ and ‘Solander’. She also teaches courses on writing and selling stories.

K: What is an early book / author that inspired you to write?

How kind of you to invite me to be part of your blog interviews, Kim. I’m honoured and it’s fun to answer your questions.

It’s hard to remember a time when I was not reading and writing. Reading took me away from my family, into magical places, writing helped me say what I wanted onto the paper, which would ‘listen’ and not rubbish my ideas. I wrote my first ‘novel’ when I was seven and I think that what influenced me most then was Anna Sewell’s ‘Black Beauty’. I loved horses and was appalled by the cruelty in the book. What affected me strongly was the note in the front of my edition which explained how the book was written to tell people about the cruelty horses suffered, and how the book actually had a powerful effect. This was how I learnt that words have power, and made sense of that bromide ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ which had always – until then –puzzled me.

K: What are you reading now?

Every book I read influences me in some way. I’m enjoying a re-read of C.J. Cherryh’s  Foreigner series, which I would force the whole world to read because it is so relevant to today’s refugee problem and how we should be behaving. I’ve just finished ‘Lethal White’ and envy the skill with which J.K. Rowling makes her characters interact, and I’ve been doing a MOOC course on Jane Austen. The pleasure of rereading her works with a disparate group of people with very different ideas has given me the opportunity to look at her writing in different ways. So enlightening.

K: What is your daily writing schedule like?

Writing’s like breathing, if I don’t do it regularly I ‘die’ a little. Unless it really is impossible, I write every day, snatching whatever moments I can from those daily necessary chores and the volunteer work I do. My home is not a shining example of housewifery! It’s not always easy to grab more than a couple of hours, but I don’t watch television unless Maori TV have a good foreign film, I listen to the news on the National Radio, and whilst food has to be grown and cooked, clothes washed and floors mopped, limiting myself to just doing the basics does mean I have some morning and evening time free for writing. I still have to be careful though when I begin research for a new novel. I am only too aware that the internet could be a shocking time waster so I back up every bit of online research with real life research with people and books. That limits time wasting on the internet so that I can manage two hours ‘real’ writing a day and two hours of necessary writing – P.R. work, submitting stories, catching up with editors etc.

K: What are you most proud of?

Writing is not easy. Like many women of my generation I put duty to family before myself, and so by the time I was able to be seriously writing for publishing I was in my late fifties. I worked hard and created a good writer’s C.V. of published short stories in journals and literary magazines, expecting that when my first novel had been mentored, assessed and edited, it would find a home with a traditional publisher because I had proved I could write publishable work. I dreamed of a penguin or oak tree on my books. My assessors are scouts for several agencies and sent my novel straight to a particular agent. Wonderful, I never had to write a query letter. Alas, the agent kindly explained the facts of publishing life to me, one of which was that though he liked my writing style my age and living in New Zealand and not the U.K meant I’d find it hard to get any agent. (He did kindly say he was tempted!) Then he filled me in on the realities of being an older writer:

1. Agents need ten books from a writer in order to earn anything.
2. Agents receive thousands of queries but of the few publishable hundreds they rarely chose one unless it was an obvious money earner.
3. Publishing was a money making business.

It was enough to make any writer despair and give up. I’m proud to say that I rousted up other older writer friends and we formed a writers’ co-operative. Acting like traditional publishers used to do we use editors, proof readers, interior and cover designers and a group of Beta readers before we published our books. And our books have won prizes. Certainly we have readers telling us how much they enjoy our novels.

K: What do you hope people get out of reading your work?

I hope that the historical fiction we write gives readers a chance to think about the past, but also to wonder about the present and the future. Have we really improved our behaviour and our attitudes since 1642 or 1887?

K: If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

To believe in myself, to go on tasting and enjoying life because those experiences would colour my writing and to ignore my naysaying parents and siblings and anyone else who belittled my efforts.

Bio

p.d.r. lindsay (no capitals please in tribute to a favourite poet, e. e. cummings) makes New Zealand home. Born in Ireland, brought up in Yorkshire, educated in England, Canada and New Zealand, writer p.d.r. lindsay is also Mrs Salmon, Ms Lindsay-Salmon and even for eight years in Japan, Professor Lindsay-Salmon. This wide experience of different cultures colours her writing and keeps her travelling.
Social issues are her main concern which is why she writes historical stories about ordinary people, the ones whose names and lives we don’t know much about. Reading the diaries and letters of parsons and farmers, wives and daughters, merchants and tradesmen showed her how the basic human dilemmas do not change over the centuries. She finds that certain human traits both good and bad, can be better shown through historical stories than through contemporary ones and hopes that readers will think about those failings as they apply to today.

You can find p.d.r. and all her works at http://www.pdrlindsay.co.nz/

K: Thank you so much for your time and insightful answers.

Unfortunately, declaring you are a writer seems to sometimes invite opinions from people who don’t quite understand the work and little pieces of our soul that we put into each and every word.

It is hard to read those realities of publishing in New Zealand too. It’s just lucky we love writing!

Check out the other New Zealand authors I have chatted with over the last year.