Kitty Fitzgerald seems to be the the Wonder Woman of modern fiction - multi-skilled and always open to experience.
She has also written four radio plays for BBC Radio 4; eight
theatre plays, and one screenplay – and has had several writing awards.Kitty was also centrally involved, with Peter Mortimer in his 2013 highly successful award-winning Iron Age Arts Festival. I also know Kitty to be committed to social and political issues
As I said A Wonder Woman of Writing.
Wendy:
So, Kitty, What is the
primary joy of writing in your life?
Kitty:
When I first started writing
- in my early thirties - it was like coming home and I knew then that this was
what I had to do. After many jobs and later a good degree as a mature student,
I thought I was going to be an artist. I enjoyed painting and making collages
but when I began writing it was a different experience; instead of feeling
relaxed, as I did as an artist, I was focused, feverish and often euphoric. It
was as if I’d tapped into a different part of my consciousness.
I do indulge in distraction activities, like many
other writers I know, but I think it’s now all part of my process and when I am
‘ready’ to write I get on with it on a daily basis for as long as it takes. I find
first drafts painful, a bit like extracting teeth, but I love the editing
process and have to be careful not to overdo it.
Completing a long piece of work gives great satisfaction. Holding a new
book of mine in my hand is wonderful and it reminds me there’s nothing else I’d
rather do
W. When did you first know you were ‘a writer’?
K. I had some fantasies about
it while I was at school but I was told I was aiming above my station. Later,
when I did my degree in my late twenties, it was my English tutors who
encouraged me to write. I entered a short story competition and was one of the
winners. The writer-in-residence who judged it, also looked at other work from
the winners. I had started a novel and had about 5000 words to show him. He
told me he thought I was a novelist and encouraged me to finish the novel I’d
started.
I took a job as Head of an
Art dept and saved up for a year before leaving the job. I got an evening
shelf-filling job, which allowed me to write during the day and be when my
daughter and partner came home. He subsidized me for that year and the result
was the first draft of my first published novel, Marge (1984 Sheba Feminist Publishers). At
the end of that year, I knew I was a writer and I would do it for the rest of
my life.
That was thirty years ago.
W. You write
novels, short stories and plays of radio and stage. How do you approach these different forms of
writing. Do you look for different outcomes?
K. They are all quite different
and require me to put on different heads. The structures are different; the
amounts that have to be carried in your head are different and the subject
matter is usually different.
I know before I begin that there will be different
outcomes; that is, I know from the start whether I’m writing a story, a play or
a novel and proceed accordingly.
However, once in a while an
idea goes through several manifestations. Pigtopia
is a perfect
The story was third person;
in the radio play, I couldn’t find the main character’s internal voice, so I
could only create the words that he actually said and in the novel the main
character was first person. So you see you can create many structures and
working practices but every so often a character comes along that frustrates
all these plans.
W. What would you say characterises the themes in your novels?
Probably the notion of
outsiders, of people living on the edge. One PhD student who studied my work
suggested I was haunted by the notion of a Trinity. And in much of my writing I
can see what he meant but it’s a subconscious pull and I’m often surprised when
I’ve finished a first draft to see that it’s trickled back in again.
K. Well…I was born in rural
Ireland and surrounded by an extended family for which attendance at Mass was
second nature and I went to Catholic schools when we migrated to England – when
Churchill was looking for a labour force to help re-build Britain.
When I was four we lived ‘in
digs’ with a landlady who had been forced by the coal board to use her spare
rooms for lodgers.
We were an Irish family but
the others were all single men: Bozo was from Yugoslavia, Tonio from Italy,
Franky from Poland and Scotty from Glasgow. We had one small downstairs room
with a double bed for mum and dad and a horsehair sofa for me, the others
shared two small rooms upstairs.
We were all outsiders and
ignorant of how the system worked. The landlady took all our ration books and
fed us slops; she also stole our money but nobody was interested in helping us.
Digs were hard to come by: it was the time of no blacks, no Irish no children.
But a fellow miner at the pit told dad about elderly neighbours of his who
might take us in.
And they did. Mr and Mrs
Higgs were as wonderful as our previous landlady, Violet Bunce had been
terrible. But I knew at five years old what it was to be an outsider.
W. Do you have a writing routine?
K. Yes, I usually start writing
around 11am and with breaks can work up to 9pm. I read and edit what I wrote
the day before and then continue. I aim to get around 2000 words under my belt
by teatime and then revise up to 9pm. Sometimes particular pieces of music are
important to the process but not always. I can’t start a piece of work – no
matter how long I’ve been researching or carrying it around in my head – until
I hear the voice of my main character inside my head. Then I decide on
First/Third person, Tense and so on.
W. What role does editing play in your writing process?
K. It’s a huge part
of the process and for me, crucial. The good thing is that I love doing it. I
do lots of drafts working between the computer and writing by hand. As an
editor, it’s the most common problem I encounter: not enough editing. I’m
guilty of lapses, just like everyone else but I’m better than I was.
What is the best
advice that you have received about your writing and who advised you?
I was told that when I
finish a good first draft of a piece of writing, I should put it in a drawer
and not look at it for a couple of weeks. That way I’ve got more chance of
coming at it as a reader, rather than the writer and will edit more
objectively. I can’t remember who gave me the advice.
W.What advice
would you give to writers in the first stage of writing their novels?
K. Another piece of
advice I came across: write with passion, edit with reason.
How long does it
normally take you to write a novel? Has this changed?
If I can engage with the
writing full time – e.g. I’m not having to go out to work to earn a living – I
can get a good draft done in a year. Pigtopia was the exception to this: that took five years
because of the experiment with language and making sure it was consistent.
Jack’s inner voice was hard to find.
I used to take longer
because I was tentative when I first started.
W. Do you think
the short story has a real place in the life of a career writer?
K. As a novel writer, I enjoy
working on a short story while my latest draft is in the drawer and I
W. What are you
working on now?
K. I’ve just finished a new thriller, which is with my agent, so I won’t say much about that but I’m also working on a Young Adult novel set in the future, which has a lot to do with dogs!
W. Tell us about
your latest published novel.
K. Identity has
just been published by Room to Write. It is a revised edition of my first
novel, Marge, which was published by Sheba
Feminist Publishers in 1984. It’s a psychic thriller and was the first feminist
thriller to give a first person voice to an incest survivor.
W. What, for you
are the best characteristics of a good editor?
K. The intention
to make the work they are editing the best it can be, rather than trying to
turn it into something else.
W. Do you think it’s possible to edit oneself to good effect?
K. I prefer to
have someone I trust to be honest to read the first and some later drafts. As
with proofreading, it’s easy to miss things when you are familiar with the work.
I still see
myself as a bit of an outsider but I’m also a dreamer and basically an
optimist, even though I can sometimes get depressed at the state of the world.
I identify myself as a writer and feel very lucky to have discovered that
aspect of my character. I always try to do too much, too many things, but
regular yoga, walking and cycling, helps both my body and mind to relax. I love
my family and my close friends. I am both a good collaborator and sometime who
likes to spend a lot of time alone. There is no such thing as retirement for a
writer and I hope I pass away with a pen in my hand.
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