Three Big Questions For Kerry Hadley-Pryce
So, here we are, closing out what has been a great, great Kerry Hadley-Pryce Week for Outsideleft. We've certainly got our steps in, done some car park climbing hipster slow motion parkour. Of course we did. Like a crazed Ed Davey doing anything to draw to Kerry's dark and unsettling new novel, Lie of the Land. Kerry is at the vanguard of the new wave of daring British writers using place as an unaplogetic, astringent character. Maybe like the way the award-winning Donald Ray Pollock did when he broke out of Knockemstiff or Edywn Butler Bayliss foregrounding ecological doom, both with such beauty. Whatever, man. Buy the books. What a week that was and to end it all with Kerry, Three Big Questions.
One: Why. Lots of artists and I got this from Bowie, who I care for not so much - lets digress, love some hits, Young Americans is always in my top 2 or 3000 songs, Sound and Vision too. But he said and this big question is extrapolated from him, so maybe, if it makes it easier, imagine you are responding to an esteemed dead entertainer rather than a living one with a fan. Lots of artists explain their process, but they don’t explain or talk about why they do it. Why, Kerry, Why do you do it, why do you write? (He said something about a ‘tell’ in painters beginning with a title. I am obviously a little too limited to have been able to understand anything about him.) Do you ever begin with a title? Jesus I so often do. Not with music, I bolt the title on after I compose something. Like Lizst. But when I used to write fiction I could begin with a title, sure…
Kerry Hadley-Pryce: I feel like there’s something neuroscientific going on that creates a pull for me to have to do it. Dopamine, or something. I don’t know, there’s something pleasurable about the whole process. I’ve done some work with Dr. Sue Woolfe in Sydney on the writing process, and we’ve talked about the various stages, which includes ‘the lull’, which is that patch of time just before you actually begin to write – the kind of gestation period – and how important it is to experience that and not to rush to put words on the page for the sake of it. As for titles, well, I don’t have regular pattern. Sometimes the title seems to just happen, other times, I have to experiment with a few thoughts after the piece is written before I land on the one that feels right.
Two: Are there better writers than you? I think it can be a zero sum game, if you are not the best, then wouldn’t your time be better spent proselytising about the greats, you love them and you want to share them.
Kerry Hadley-Pryce: Hah, talk about a leading question… Anyway, what does that mean, exactly: ‘the best’? Is there such a thing? In creativity, I mean. Is there a best? Ought there be? And if there is, would I want to be it? Not sure I would. I’m also not sure I know how to proselytise. Does it involve equipment?
Three: I think there might be two types of writers, the ones you read and not because they are bad, but they make you want to write, in my case Jonathan Ames (always) Katherine Mansfield (currently) KHP (very recently) and the ones you read and you just sit back and think, wow! That was so great I shouldn’t actually write (in my case Luster Raven Lellani, K. Patrick, KHP). What about you?
Kerry Hadley-Pryce: Paul Auster’s earlier novels made me want to write. Joel Lane is my absolute go-to for inspiration – always, always, always makes me want to write. Siri Hustvedt makes me sit back, for a long time, thinking both wow, and how? And Claire Keegan. I mean, Claire Keegan… come on… even just thinking about her writing gives me the wows. Lately I’ve been really impressed by the storytelling in John Boyne’s latest crop of novels.
(Not) Four: Of all of the hours, can you estimate, how many hours you’ve used up in your life in and out of writing. All of them, including this one. If you could. Would you do it all again? Or do it all again differently?
Kerry Hadley-Pryce: Right. Well, I started writing ‘details’ (apparently, I called them that, according to my dad) in notebooks when I was three years old. By ‘details’ I mean squiggles that looked like shorthand, or an approximation of joined-up writing. And then I’d read out the story behind the details. Apparently. That’s a very long time ago. Even if I just round up the writing time to 40,000 hours, it’s only 4.5 years, which, when you put it like that, is less time than I’ve spent hoovering up academic qualifications and trying to be clever. Feels like I’ve been a bit lazy. If I could do it all again, I’d maybe do more. But, I mean, there’s still time, I’m not finished yet. As for doing things differently: no, I don’t think so. This is more about my attitude to life generally though, probably. I can’t change the past, etc. etc. and anyway, opportunities arose when they did and I’m okay with that.
Essential Information
KERRY HADLEY-PRYCE WEEK at OUTSIDELEFT
1. Introducing KHP...
2. Excerpt from Lie of the Land
3. Brutalist is the multi storey car park in Stourbridge
4. The Canal
5. Welcome to the Walking Week
6. The Happy Shopper (#41)
7. Three Big Questions
Main image from outsideleft I think, retreated to appear darker.
Kerry at Salt Publishing is here
Kerry is appearing at the Bear Bookshop in Bearwood on January 25th at 6pm, info here
And at the Wolverhampton LitFest with R.M. Francis, info here