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Interview With Sarah Waters – Beyond Any Label

In many ways, Sarah Waters is lesbian fiction’s dream author. Not only have her books sold well around the world, they have been adapted into successful BBC television movies-all while being unabashedly, unapologetically, erotically queer. Her first novel, Tipping the Velvet (1998), a coming-out and coming-of-age tale about village girl Nan King’s forays onto the London stage as a male impersonator, was selected as a New York Times Notable Book and was later turned into a BBC miniseries. Her second novel, Affinity (1999), a dark, spooky story about spiritualism in a Victorian women’s prison, won the Somerset Maugham Prize and resulted in Waters being named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year.

With her third novel, Fingersmith (2002), Waters showed no signs of slowing down. The suspenseful, meticulously plotted book took readers deep into the world of Victorian pornography and the lives of thieves, and was short listed for the Orange Prize as well as nominated for the Man Booker Prize, the UK ‘s most prestigious book award. In 2005, Fingersmith came to television as a three-part BBC miniseries, further cementing Waters’ status as the historical novelist of our time. The fact that her novels continue to feature lesbians as their main characters seems, wondrously, to be entirely incidental.

Her latest book, The Night Watch, is a departure from the Victorian lesbian romps we have come to expect from Waters, but it still places lesbians front and center. Set in 1940s London, The Night Watch weaves together the lives of three women and one man, moving backward in time to reveal their interconnections and the ways they are all affected by life during World War II. Last month I spoke to Waters while she was in the midst of a world-wide tour to promote the book, and asked her about taking risks in moving on from the Victorian era, how she approaches writing, and whether she still identifies as a lesbian author.

AfterEllen.com: Your books require a lot of research.

Sarah Waters: They do, they do, although that’s the side of things that I really enjoy, actually. Before I wrote fiction I was doing a Ph.D., so I feel very at home doing research. And also of course it feels terribly productive. It’s like a way of kidding yourself that you’re doing lots of work. In fact you’re not actually writing, of course, but it is crucial…so I enjoy it. I also think that…with historical fiction…the trick of it is giving the impression that you’ve done more research than you really have. [Laughs.] You just need to do enough…to immerse yourself in the period, and then you sound like you know what you’re talking about.

AE: Do you have a particular methodology that you use when you begin a novel?

SW: I usually start off a book with a few months-three or four months-of solid research, which in itself throws up ideas for me about character and plot. So I usually find that by the end of those few months that I’m kind of itching to start writing, really. Then I leave research behind, but go back to it as I need to.

AE: Once you’ve begun writing, tell me about your process. Do you have an outline? Do you just sort of go forward?

SW: With the first three books, the Victorian-set ones, I kind of had the books worked out well in advance. I mean, Affinity and Fingersmith had pretty complicated plots, so I had to really have the plots worked out before I started writing. And it was a question of getting to know my characters and getting to know how they felt about what the plot required them to do. But with The Night Watch, it was a very different sort of book to write and, quite unnervingly for me, it was much more character-led. I found that I didn’t know what was going to happen chapter by chapter. I knew the broad structure, the three-part-structure, and I knew broadly what happened to the characters, but I didn’t know- With something like Fingersmith, I knew in advance what was going to be in chapter five, what was going to be in chapter eight…but with this book I had to try out a lot of scenes, and rewrite them or abandon them, or put them in a different order. So it was a very labor-intensive way of writing.

AE: How long do you think you spent on the writing?

SW: I spent about four years altogether on the book from start to finish, including all the time for research. That was partly a long time, too, because I’ve been busier since Fingersmith did well and Tipping the Velvet was on TV. I’ve had more demands on my time as a writer, so my writing life has actually got a bit chopped up, so that slowed me down. AE: Many critics have said that The Night Watch was a big risk for you because it’s not a Victorian-era historical. Did you ever think of it as a risk?

SW: I know, it’s quite an alarming seeing that, isn’t it? I’m glad nobody said it to me like that when I started. … It felt like a leap of faith, put it like that, because parts of what I wanted from the experience of writing the book was to push my writing into new territory and see what happened to it. I was slightly worried. I’d got an audience with Fingersmith who seemed to enjoy all the things that Fingersmith did, and I knew that the new book precisely wouldn’t do those things. It wouldn’t be kind of extravagant and twists and turns, and all that sort of lush Victorian stuff. So I was a bit anxious about it at the start, and I was also anxious that I had a vision of a novel that I might…not be able to pull off. But once I got…two years in, it sort of all began to fall into place, so I felt a bit more relaxed about it.

AE: When you said you were worried at the beginning that you wouldn’t be able to pull it off, were you referring to the moving backward in time construction, or was it something else?

SW: Actually, that sort of technical challenge I’ve always quite enjoyed. It was more the mood of the book?like I said, the fact that it’s character-driven, the fact that it starts off with characters who are kind of tired and a bit stuck, and there’s a lot of conversations. People just sort of wander around in part one, or they sit down and have a conversation, and of course I’m used to writing novels where there’s quite a nice pace from the start, where it’s clear that this is a story that’s going to take you on a bit of a journey. But with this book, it wasn’t until I was writing part two, really, that I felt that pace, because that’s the point of the book that their lives were more dramatic, in the war, and afterwards they were all a bit displaced. So there were things like that that made me anxious about it and slowed me down. … It’s ’cause it’s written in the third person and the others were all written in the first person. It’s just a question of having to work out how to do that because I hadn’t done it before.

AE: I found that it began as a somewhat slow, kind of depressing situation.

SW: Yeah, absolutely.

AE: And that moving backward in time made it much more understandable and ultimately hopeful. Was that your intention or did that just kind of happen?

SW: That I think just kind of happened because…I knew it was going to be a melancholy book, right from the start. That was what I wanted to write about, and I didn’t know what kind of reading experience it would be, given the structure and the fact that not only do you move back into the past, but you move from the sadness of the first part to the…optimism of some of the characters in the 1941 situation. So I just didn’t know how that would work for a reader. I knew what I was trying to suggest, I suppose, with it.

AE: And what were you trying to suggest?

SW: Just this tension, I suppose, between optimism and disappointment, I guess. It’s fundamentally a novel about disappointment and loss and betrayal to a certain extent, but at the same time I hope that’s tempered by the moments in the book where…there are moments of real contact between people and genuine intimacy between people.

AE: The style also is very different from your other ones, but I feel like it still sounds like a book written by Sarah Waters. Did that come naturally to you or was that something you had to work on?

SW: That was something that emerged as I was writing. I could tell quite soon after I started that my writing would be different, because…the mood of the ’40s was just so different to the mood of the 19th century as I’d been writing it. My 19th-century novels have got increasingly extravagant, really, as they took on Victorian models like melodrama and the novel of temptation and things like that. But ’40s fiction is much more restrained and much more domestic and quiet, and a bit chillier really, which I like. I like all that stuff, so I was interested to feel my own writing change as I was writing. I just had to sit back and let it happen, really.

AE: Why did you choose Second World War London ?

SW: I’m not even sure why I did. … It was almost arbitrary, in the sense that I didn’t want to go further back in time. I wanted to move from the 19th century and I didn’t want to go backward, I didn’t want to come into the present either, so it had to be somewhere in the 20th century. … Initially it was the postwar world I wanted to write about, it was very much that?again because I knew that I wanted to write a sad novel about loss, so that immediate postwar world seemed to fit. But then once I’d made the decision to set the book backwards, I knew the war was going to be quite central to the book too, which was actually great because I’d started to read about the war and got very captivated by the impact of the war on London and on women’s lives, gay life, whatever, so it all sort of fitted then. It all kind of fell into place. AE: In one part of The Night Watch, Julia says that she only wrote her first novel as a joke and then discovered that she was sort of good at it. That made me wonder if you had always known that you were going to be a writer. Tipping the Velvet came out of your graduate research, didn’t it?

SW: Yeah, it did. No, a couple of people have mentioned that comment [and asked if] it might be a sort of thing about my own experience, and I didn’t intend it to be. Although actually it might as well be in a way, because yeah…having written my Ph.D., I had an idea for a lesbian historical novel that was Tipping the Velvet. It was very much one idea, and I thought I’d give it a go and see what happened. I hadn’t always planned to be a novelist at all, and in fact it took me a few years to realize that was what I’d become…and that I actually really liked it and I felt very at home. I feel very at home doing it, and it’s made me realize now that as a child I did love to write, in a sense, and I have always loved language and loved writing and stuff, but I think doing academic work as a student?that was where my creative energies went for a long time.

AE: And why did you choose to not continue in academics? I mean, you’re no longer teaching, right?

SW: No, no. Well, you know, I enjoyed teaching. I enjoyed research much more, though. … I didn’t especially want to become an academic. I had friends who were academics and I thought it was completely fine, but not something I wanted to devote my life to, whereas the idea of writing a novel seemed a lot more appealing, actually. Then it just kind of took off, really.

AE: So Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith were both made into miniseries. Do you want The Night Watch to be made into a movie?

SW:It’s funny, isn’t it? Because of course with those two adaptations behind me, people have been saying to me from the start, “Will The Night Watch be made? Won’t it be great if it is made?” And it will be interesting if it’s made, and of course money-wise…undoubtedly it would be a treat, but I’ve always felt with The Night Watch that it wouldn’t lend itself very easily to adaptation. Part of me feels there’s no reason why books have to be adapted for TV or film at all. In some ways I get quite frustrated that the TV and film industry do always go to books. I kind of think…commission something new, leave books alone. But obviously I won’t be saying that if I get handed a nice big check. [Laughs.] So basically, yeah, it would be interesting. I’ve found the processes of seeing Tipping and Fingersmith adapted just absolutely fascinating, because it is a complete translation into another medium. And it was tremendous fun, too, meeting the actors and talking about it. It was great fun, so I would certainly not be reluctant to go through the process again, put it like that.

AE: How did you feel about the finished products?

SW:I thought they were great. I thought Fingersmith was especially a really good quality show…and it was very faithful to the book. It was spookily faithful to the book at times, which was exciting. Tipping the Velvet was fantastic fun, and certainly got a lot of attention in the UK when it came out and all of that felt very exciting, so they were both very good experiences.

AE: I wanted to ask you about prisons because they seem to feature quite prominently in your books. Why are you so interested in these places of confinement?

SW: I’m not even really sure. When I was planning The Night Watch and I realized it was going to feature a prison I was kind of [thinking], oh God, here’s another one, where’s that come from? I don’t really know, except that I think I find the idea of confinement peculiarly horrible…as do lots of people, really. Certainly with The Night Watch there was lots about space in the book, and it made sense to have the prison setting there, inasmuch as I got interested in how the war had intruded on people’s domestic spaces. It either blew their homes up or it meant that people had to share intimate spaces. Like their homes?they had to take in lodgers and things like that, or they had to share shelters and railway carriages and things like that. It’s something that people talk about a lot. And I realize that there are a few significant moments in the book that take place in bathrooms or toilets, where people can actually lock the door behind them. So I think there’s a tension in the book between being in control of your own space and being out of control of your own space?the idea of being able to lock yourself in the bathroom or the idea of somebody locking you into a cell…with in between all these disrupted spaces of the city of London. Thematically the prison seemed to make sense, I suppose, but I think ultimately there’s some other psychological pull for it for me that I can’t quite account for. I was probably locked in a cupboard when I was three or something.

AE: Maybe it’s just a continual metaphor for the closet that comes in and out of your books.

SW:Yeah, maybe it is, maybe it is. AE: I’m sure you’ve been asked this before, but do you mind being identified as a lesbian writer?

SW: I don’t actually. I have been asked it?I do get asked it a lot. I always say no, I don’t. And partly I think if anyone’s responsible for labeling me a lesbian writer, it’s often been me. I think I’m so anxious about avoiding the label?I mean, I’m so anxious about not wanting to be seen to avoid the label?I often overcompensate by taking it on myself, because it’s important to me. … I’m writing with a clear lesbian agenda in the novels. It’s right there at the heart of the books. And it’s both at the heart of the books and yet it’s also incidental, because that’s how it is in my life, and that’s how it is, really, for most lesbian and gay people, isn’t it? It’s sort of just there in your life. So I feel it makes absolute sense to call me a lesbian writer, but at the same time…I’m just a writer. I’m a historical novelist?that’s another label. I think there are lots of different labels that can be used about writers at the same time, and I certainly don’t sit down at my desk thinking “I am a lesbian writer, I am a lesbian writer.” I’m just writing stuff that interests me and feels important to me, but inevitably because I’m a lesbian and I’m interested in issues about sexuality and gender…those are the stories that I go to town with.

AE: Do you read what’s defined as “lesbian literature”?

SW: I do from time to time; not as much as I used to. I think it was…fantastically exciting and important to me when I was coming out to read lesbian fiction. I remember in the ’80s there was a lot of it around, and not all of it was great, to be honest…but it was just exciting that it was there at all. These days I’d probably be less likely to read a novel just because it was lesbian…I’d want something else to grab me about it. There are some great lesbian writers in the UK at the moment. Ali Smith is a writer I like. Joanna Briscoe, Charlotte Mendelson, they’re both writing quite interesting stuff. Jeanette Winterson, of course, I think really was responsible for allowing lesbian fiction to be more ambitious in the UK. I think there was an amazing impact from her novels. So I do [read lesbian fiction], but like I say, I don’t read it for its own sake.

AE: Some of the materials I got from your American publisher said that you are planning your next novel to be set in the 1950s.

SW: I think so. That is the plan at the moment, although it is very early days with the book so I haven’t actually… [Laughs.] But yeah, I got very attached to the postwar scene, so I think I’ll move away from the war itself but just nudge into the early 1950s.

AE: Still in London?

SW:Possibly not, actually. Possibly not, but anyway, it’s such early days I’m not sure where it’s going.

AE: Why do you feel that you’re so drawn to writing historical fiction? SW:

That was my way into writing fiction. It grew completely out of my Ph.D., which was about historical fiction and how we reimagine and reinvent the past. … I often get asked whether I will write a novel with a contemporary setting, and it may be that I will one day. Ultimately I think as a novelist, you’re interested in stories, in storytelling, and it may be that a story will come along that works best with a contemporary setting and I’ll kind of go for it, but up till now what’s excited me has always been the sense of finding new stories from the past. Especially, of course, because I’ve been writing about lesbian and gay things. I still have the sense that the past is full of fascinating gay stories that are a gift to a historical novelist. So for now I’m content to play around with that.

AE: I also wanted to ask you what you think about all this stuff about gay marriage in the UK, now that you can form civil partnerships.

SW:I think it’s quite amazing. We could never have predicted it here. Twenty years, probably even 10 years ago it would have seemed unimaginable, and things have just shifted. It is thanks to gay activism. … I think it’s pretty amazing, although my partner and I haven’t got any plans ourselves at the moment to do it. I think if we had kids or if we had shared property or something, we would do it for those very practical reasons, but we don’t feel the urge to do that ourselves.

AE: Did you ever grow up with the urge for marriage?

SW:No, I have to say, I’ve never had that particular urge. [Laughs.] But I’m delighted that gay people who do have that urge can go ahead and do it.

AE: In the course of all your success, are there any moments where you just sit there and go, “Wow, I can’t believe all these straight people are reading my novels about lesbians!”

SW:Yeah, every day. But…I can’t believe people are reading my books at all, you know. It’s not just the straight people reading the lesbian stuff. I still haven’t gotten over the fact that I’m in this amazingly privileged position of being able to devote myself to writing stuff that I want to write, and then people want to read it too; it’s quite amazing.

AE: That’s wonderful. Do you feel any pressure?

SW:I have done. I have done. When I was starting The Night Watch and it was taking a long time to come together, and people were saying “When’s the next book coming out? When’s the next book?” And Fingersmith … had done so well that I knew I would have an even bigger audience for the next book, and more scrutiny on it and things like that, it was quite scary. I’d just get panic attacks about it. But at the moment I’m in a good place, I guess, because the new book’s out and it’s doing well, and it’s quite nice. No doubt I’ll be having panic attacks again…when I’m struggling with the next book, but I think that’s just part of the writer’s life, really.

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