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" I studied the short story as part of my creative writing course at university but then set off as a novelist. Generally, there is a sense that even if you want to write short stories, you need to do a novel first. "

Sarah Hall

Writing

You

Story

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" Wonderful characters rotate around and through bookshops on a daily basis, competing with and possibly even triumphing over fiction when it comes to entertainment, strangeness and inspiration. "

" I'm very aware of modern countryside issues, such as rewilding: how, as science progresses, we begin to understand that a healthy ecosystem is multiform. "

" Over the years, I've lived in a variety of places, including America, but I was born and raised in the Lake District, in Cumbria. Growing up in that rural, sodden, mountainous county has shaped my brain, perhaps even my temperament. "

" Language description and metaphors seem readily available. The things I have to work harder at are plot, pacing, and form. "

" When you are a kid, a wolf is an amazing sight, so sumptuous. I sort of knew these were splendid creatures, that I was not going to find them outside roaming around. It was like a dog, but not a dog. It was incredible, a god! "

" For about two years, while researching 'The Wolf Border,' I was a complete wolf bore. I would regurgitate everything I was researching, whether people were interested or not. "

" You think back and you ask yourself why you became so interested in wolves. I think it was because when I was very small, growing up in a little hamlet near Shap, we would go to Lowther Wildlife Park for birthday parties. Now closed, it was only three miles from my parents' house. "

" I felt impelled to write. It felt demonic, and I wanted to improve, the way some people habitually pick up a guitar and get better at playing it and making up songs. "

" My favourite pool is located in a remote valley in the eastern Lake District, surrounded by vine-hung cliffs and slippery boulders. It has a torrential sheet waterfall at one end and is almost black in colour, so it appears bottomless, a portal to nowhere. "

" Apex predators are good for an environment in terms of biodiversity and trophic cascade - we have very few. But realistically, only a few areas could sustain free-roaming wolves in Britain, mostly in Scotland. "

" I've always been interested in wolves, since I was a child. There was a wolf enclosure in a wildlife park very close to where I was brought up; they were the main attraction. "

" My writing is called exotic or avant-garde because I write about rural places. Has it really come to this, that if you write about the country you are avant-garde? How did this happen? Modern agriculture and spaces are still so relevant. "

" Quite a lot is required of writers these days in terms of, if not promoting the work, then being a representative of the work. It's a difficult thing, really. "

" I write in the mornings or afternoons - I'm not a night owl and can write for only four or five hours maximum. "

" I was brought up in the north of England, which is probably no rougher than anywhere else, but I remember as a child being kind of mesmerized by girls fighting on the playground. "

Sarah Hall

Remember

Kind

" In my early 20s, connecting with fiction was a difficult process. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to what was meaningful, what convinced, and what made sense. "

" Daniel Woodrell has made a name as a master of prose with personality - a densely descriptive, gamey form of storytelling, one might say traditional storytelling - of late rather an unfashionable mode. "

" You are often asked to explain your work, as if the reader isn't able to work it out. And people always try and label you by your work. "

" There was a lot of fiction I did not enjoy, whose landscapes seemed bland and unevocative, the characters faint-hearted within them, the very words lacking vibrancy. "

" For its speculations to be taken seriously, dystopian fiction must be part of a discussion of contemporary society, a projection of ongoing political failures perhaps, or the wringing of present jeopardy for future disaster. "

" Dystopian novels, such as Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' often tend to site their despotised or deformed civilisations in urban environments. "

" Fear is a relative thing; its effects are relative to power. "

" A lot of my literature deals with these people who are somehow magnetic because they have that ability to step over lines. "

" I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown. "

" Art history became an A-level option at my school the year I started sixth form. This happened because another student and I cajoled and bullied the head of the art department into arranging it with the examination board. "

" Revisiting much-loved childhood novels is never easy. "

" James Salter has talents on the page we novelists would sell souls to the devil for. "

" Show, don't tell, is a mantra repeated by tutors of creative writing courses the world over. As advice for amateurs, it is sound and helps avoid character profiling, unactivated scenes, and broken narrative frames. "

" I like extreme situations: people pushed out of their comfort zones; the civil veneer stripped off. "