20 Writerly Questions for…. Moria Young

 
1. How would you summarize your new book in one sentence?
In a damaged future world, a single-minded teenager goes in search of her stolen brother and discovers herself and love on the blood red road.
 
2. How long did it take you to write this book?
Four and a half years.
 
3. How did you choose your characters’ names?
With care. If I don’t choose the correct name for a character, I can’t write them. I find names everywhere and anywhere. Myths, phone books, newspapers, maps, baby name books and sometimes real people.
 
4. How many drafts did you go through?
After the first draft, which takes the most time, I stop counting. It’s a continual process.
 
5. Who was the first person to read your manuscript?
My writing group. We’ve been meeting every two weeks for the past eight years. I would have given up long ago if it weren’t for them.
 
6. If your book were to become a movie, who would you like to see star in it?
 I’d like to see exciting new talent discovered for the lead roles and wonderful character actors for the other roles.
 
7. What’s your favourite city in the world?
Emerald City. It is a real place, isn’t it?
 
8. Did you always want to be a writer?
When I was eight or nine, yes. Then I wanted to be an actress and, after that, an opera singer. I’ve managed to have a bash at all three, with varying degrees of success.
 
9. What was your very first story about? When did you write it?
I wrote ‘The Heirloom Mystery’ when I was eight. It was about the theft of a silver candlestick and I used the word ‘Gleeps!’ a lot. I think I must have made it up. I’ve never heard anybody else use it.
 
10. What was your favourite book as a kid?
The Wind in the Willows. My dad read it to me when I was very young, only three or four.
 
11. If you could be any character from any book, who would you be?
Flat Stanley.  
 
12. If there was one book you wish you had written what would it be?
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
 
13. If you could talk to any writer living or dead who would it be, and what would you ask?
Jane Austen. We’d take a long walk together from Bath to Charlcombe and we’d talk about life. We might be late for tea.
 
14. How do you organize your library?
I don’t. Wherever I can find room, that’s where the books go.
 
15. What’s on your nightstand right now?
Tripwire by Lee Child and The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler.
 
16. Where is your favorite place to write?
In my little white box of a room at the hairdresser’s at the top of my road. No internet, no windows, nothing to distract me.
 
17. Do you have any writing rituals?
I set an egg timer to remind me to get up and stretch every hour.
 
18. When do you write best, morning or night?
I’m at my most productive in the morning between 8am and 1pm. I have no idea when I write best.
 
19. What is the best gift someone could give a writer?
Time and silence.
 
20. What is the best advice someone could give a writer?
Fill the well and keep it topped up. By that I mean, read widely and constantly. Watch a lot of movies, old and new. Experience plays, sporting events, dance, and music of all kinds. Live your life. Make time to daydream. Become an eavesdropper. Then, when you’ve got a story that aches to be told, you’ll have plenty to draw on. Oh, and always carry a notebook and pen.


From the Hardcover edition.

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