Journey to the Northern Shore

Quick-Fire Q&A with Janis Mackay

Join us as Janis Mackay, author of On a Northern Shore, takes part in our series of quick-fire Q&As!

What is a quick-fire Q&A?

We have our interviewee pick a number at random and we ask them the general question listed next to it.

Shortly after we switch to asking book-specific questions, to give you a brief insight into our wonderful writers and their books.

__________________________

What is the most difficult thing about being an author?

Oh, discipline and perseverance are key, especially when dealing with so many other things, such as living your life. I also do a lot of teaching. I think for me, the biggest challenge is the distraction.

Have you always wanted to be an author?

Yes. The story about that is that when I was about nine, I remember my grandparents visiting one Sunday. I was in the hallway taking her fur coat, and she said, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

And I said, with great enthusiasm, ‘I want to be a writer.’

She said, ‘Well, you can't do that. That's just a hobby. You must get a proper job.’

I kind of took her seriously. For better or worse, you know. I remember thinking that a journalist is a proper job where I get to be a writer. But it was a bit of a compromise, really.

So, I did become a journalist. I trained as a journalist, but I didn't really like it. Well, no, it wasn't. I didn't like it, but it wasn’t really what I meant when I said I want to be a writer. It took me a bit of a long detour. I was about 40 when I finally did a master's in creative writing.

What was your favourite book as a child?

Things like Black Beauty and Heidi. The one that I really remember well was one called Crin Blanc, which was about the white horses of the Camargue in France. I found that enchanting.

But there was also Malory Towers by Enid Blyton, where there is a girl called Darrell who is a writer and is in the boarding school where she would write stories in the attic of the school. I just thought, wow, I want to be Darrell.

If you could summarise your writing process and five words, what would they be?

That's hard. I mean, I've been a long time. So, endurance is maybe one word.

Community. Along the way, I have been part of writing groups, and I teach a lot of creative writing. I think that fostering a community of writers is helpful.

Dedication and self-belief that you kind of just keep going.

And finally, imagination.

What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

To read a lot and to read widely. Both the classics and contemporary.

Then to develop a practice of writing – it's like developing a muscle. Something that I teach a lot is free-flow writing. Essentially, become a good friend to yourself in your writing practice, and to lower your expectations, allowing yourself to write badly, because if you have a big expectation of perfection, it's not going to happen. I mean, it might eventually, but I think initially you just want to try and be quite playful, free and explorative.

Realistically, if you were any character from any book, who would you be?

Probably Jane Eyre. In terms of perseverance, independence, strength and dignity.

What ways have you changed as a writer since writing your first book?

Oh, gosh. A lot. The first three books I wrote were a lot of telling and not showing. It was such a big revelation for me to realise that I had to translate what I had written into quite a different style to allow the characters to come forward.

The advice to the younger writer would be to trust, get out of the way and let the characters steer.

Who is your favourite author?

John Steinbeck.

Is the finished book what you expected when you first started writing it?

Probably not, because it's gone through so many changes. But in some ways, yes. That's an interesting question. I wrote many drafts. I would say that the character Rob has stayed true to the initial drafts, however.

What is the main message you would like people to take from the book?

I suppose one of the big things that I was thinking about was trauma. And to what extent can you live freely in the moment if you're burdened by trauma? Rob and Mairi are both haunted. They can't really have a relationship with each other until they release that baggage. It's something to do with freedom, really.

How did the narrative of this book come about?

I did initially have a sense of Rob because I've lived in Caithness. I lived there for five years, and I met people like him. The cottage that Rob lives in is the cottage that I lived in. I was a writer in residence, where I lived in this little cottage by the beach. The setting is very strong. I had that kind of image to begin with. The place, the bleakness and the ghostly atmosphere of it really struck me.

When teaching creative writing, I set student exercises, and I do the exercises too. I found that I was gathering a lot of scenes which I thought could I create a novel of this. It is a bit like a quilt where you collect patterns or lots of squares and then you weave it together.

Are any of the characters in this book based on anyone in particular?

The character of Rob is possibly based on a couple of guys that I knew. I've known a few men like him who are slightly lost, wild souls, leaning into alcohol and losing their way a bit, but are basically good.

Who's your least favourite character from the book and why?

Jake. He plays the role of being a bit of a bad guy.

Or the landlord. Everything that he represents just sums it up, really – coming in and buying up the land, strutting around and the disparity of wealth.

Why did you choose the cover that you did?

So, the northern lights were important to me when discussing the book cover, not that I ever saw them. Many people have. In Caithness, the thing that really struck me when I lived there was the sky. It's huge. And basically, there's an emptiness about the county of Caithness. It's that bit on the tip of Scotland.

There's quite a lot of night in the book. I quite liked that to have a night sky, and the fact that there is some of the aurora there gives a sense of otherness or magicalness.

 I also liked the image of the woman alone amongst this empty landscape.

What is the emotional reaction you would like or expect people to have from this book?

I would hope that they feel that they travel to a place that is somewhere in their imagination.

That is a feeling of being on the edge of things. I could imagine people living in cities, in busy places, and when they read my book, they have a kind of escape from where they are.

I hope they're just kind of engrossed in the story. It's basically a journey towards love and all the things that get in the way of that.