Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

Over the course of her career, Sarah Hall has written two novels: the Coney Island drama, The Electric Michaelangelo and the naturalistic Haweswater. She's been our special guest this week, sharing writerly wisdom and research tips.

 You can meet her in our Proudly Lo-Fi Video Feature here: 

 
Welcome to the conclusion of my deceptively simple feature: Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing...

 
Jason Boog:
How did you find an audience for your first book? Do you interact with your readers very much? Why or why not? 

Sarah Hall:

The first book was a very low-key thing, coming out of my young northern obscurity as it did, and I just had some good luck with prizes, reviews and  word of mouth. Haweswater was really well received in the north, where I'm  from, and that was a big relief.

On a broader stage I guess these thing find their own way with the reading public and find their own corners in the  market too - nothing much an author can do to control that I reckon. I try to interact with readers, I like doing reading events, and I love meeting  people who have read the work and have an opinion about it.

It's good to know how and why things reach others or don't, what common thing you have managed to transmit or haven't. I am also a reader and I know it's a
real joy, and often a surprise, to get to meet a writer - though I always find myself a bit inarticulate and awed in the presence of anyone I greatly admire.

Readers don't really influence what it is that you write, or even why you want to write, that really is down to your own pathology, but along with publishers they do make it possible to pay the rent, or not pay it.

I recognize that debt. Having said that readers are people and people do influence the work, so the hope is that when you are writing you're communing with the people-reader hybrid. To want to express is to want to connect after all.