“Once I identified that impulse, and reasoned myself out of it, I wrote the final scene as it is now – and I felt the novel was finished,” Rooney said.
By Elizabeth Flock
Irish writer Sally Rooney says forcing a writing day almost never works. The Booker Prize-nominated author says that either she wakes up and has an initial idea, which she runs with until bedtime, or she doesn’t, and it’s best to turn her attention elsewhere.
“Conversations with Friends,” her debut novel and this month’s book club pick, began as an idea of four central characters: 21-year-old Frances, her best friend and ex-girlfriend Bobbi, and an older couple with whom they become entangled. The idea then became a short story, and then one of the biggest books of the last few years. Rooney says she only knew the novel was over once she wrote its final scene.
Below, read more writing advice from Rooney, about why she doesn’t think everybody needs to read, and listen to the album that’s on her mind right now.
1. What is your daily writing routine?
It varies. If the work is going well, I’ll usually lie in bed for a while in the morning, thinking about what I might write that day. Then after I get up, I work on and off until I go to bed. If the writing isn’t going so well, I do other things, or else I try to force myself to continue writing anyway, which never works. It’s all about the initial idea for me. If it’s there, I’ll almost always have a good day. And if it’s not, it doesn’t matter how hard I try, nothing of value will happen. I have to humble myself before the initial idea. When a week goes by without one, I feel very humble indeed. Continue reading
Normal People’s treatment of nudity and sex is a gateway to so much more .
Should the BBC be making more programmes specifically targeted at older viewers? Responding to a letter accusing the corporation of taking older viewers for granted, the audience services department (on behalf of senior management) said that, in their opinion, the over-50s actually had varied tastes, so were encouraged to enjoy shows made for a “general audience”.
That wasn’t good enough for DCMS chair Julian Knight, who declared that many people feel “the BBC has left them behind”, while, in contrast, writer Charlie Higson has said that the BBC was “forever tying itself in knots about the ageing demographic of its viewers” and stereotyping them by programming gardening shows and documentaries about tanks. It’s also notable that BBC Three is getting an extra £40 million for its terrestrial reboot, with a schedule “aimed at audiences 16-34”, while BBC Four becomes a repeats channel.
But is the viewing audience really that simply – or starkly – divided? I think it’s eminently more sensible to make programming for that so-called “general audience” rather than fretting about demographic targets or second-guessing audience preferences in such an offhand, even patronising, way.
One of the big hits of lockdown, BBC Three’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People, might seem a prime example of “yoof” telly, as a coming-of-age drama centring on two teenagers navigating love, sex, family and education. Yet only 5m of the record 16.2m viewers in its first week were from that 16-34 group; the other two-thirds were older viewers.
And that makes perfect sense. You don’t need to be a teenager right now to be able to understand adolescent experience; we’ve all gone through it. Nor do you need to match the characters’ age in order to appreciate a sensitively crafted, beautifully performed piece of drama. If anything, it might be a more powerful watch with an added wistful nostalgia. Certainly, Rooney’s readership wasn’t confined to young adulthood, even as many labelled her a “millennial” voice.