Interview: Kate Le Vann, Novelist

"I would like young women to be more interested in feminism, to stop hating women for being, say, thin, which seems to happen too much."

"The internet and twitter and all of these things that are supposed to be killing publishing are just ways of reading more, aren't they?"

Hilariously self-deprecating and absolutely brilliant, Kate Le Vann is the internationally published British author of such poignant novels as Two Friends, One Summer and Tessa In Love. She tells us about everything from writing young adult fiction and how she single-handedly brought down Julie Burchill’s infamous Modern Review, to bearcrows, stalker comedies and the best places in San Francisco.

Her latest novel, The Worst of Me, injects some much needed realism into the YA literature scene, “I think this novel is a bit different from the others because I always have lovely perfect boy heroes and the hero in this is a bit of a wrong'un, but still fanciable and sexy. And when you fall in love in your teens (or whenever) the chances are he's not going to be perfect and mature and clever and say the right things all the time and do the right things. So maybe Jonah is a bit more realistic? Not that you can't meet the love of your life at 16, but it does quite often go wrong.”

Right now she is enjoying San Francisco, as her husband is doing a fellowship at Stanford University, and she is taking the opportunity to research another setting for her next book, “there are a lot of things here that inspire me here.”


I find that YA fiction is done better (it’s taken more seriously, there are loads more great books for teens and not just all for preteens) in America than in the UK, what do you think?
I'm going to be published by Egmont books in the US, and have been reading some of their newest releases - they're a brand new publishing house over here. The books I've read have been FANTASTIC, in particular, Candor by Pam Bachorz and Food, Girls and Other Things I Can't Have by Allen Zadoff. One is really cool, the other is really funny. And when I was growing up it was always American YA I read, mainly Paul Zindel, who was my absolute hero, he wrote really funny romances that were as much about the boy as the girl. And I wanted to call Tessa In Love, "I Love You More Than Bacon" as an homage to My Darling My Hamburger by Paul Zindel. But then I'm currently reading a YA novel called Stolen by Lucy Christopher which is phenomenal - really daring and dodgy in a good way - and that's British. I guess there's really great and really not so great in both places but I think I secretly agree with you, but wouldn't dare say so because I think I could easily be judged in the really not so great.

Did you study English or something writing-related?
I did law! At Manchester University. I thought I'd be a barrister because I'd seen cool programmes with lawyers on telly, and I didn't think people like me became writers, so even though I always really loved it, it didn't even occur to me to wish I could be a writer.

Do you think it helped?
So yeah... no, not at all. It took me about a week to realise I was totally rubbish at law, so instead of using the proper textbooks I just used study guides. So I learned nothing. And if you don't go into it, it's pretty useless, particularly because the law keeps changing every year, so probably half of the law I didn't learn is already not even law any more. I did get a place in bar school, which shows you how easy it is to get in. Thanks, Nutshell guides! But I'd have been awful as a barrister, losing the bits of paper I needed and doing my homework the night before and innocent people would have gone to prison.

While I was sitting around realising I didn't want to spend thousands of pounds going to Bar School to be rubbish, I used to read the Media Jobs bit of the Guardian, hoping to find a job at a fancy fashion magazine, making tea, like that ever happened - it doesn't, I think. But there was a little comedy football magazine that put in an ad, and it was run by really cool blokes who didn't care about experience and wanted a girl columnist. Which was me. That sort of gave me confidence, even though the people who owned the magazine shut it down and didn't pay anyone what they were owed, so I didn't make anything. And then I moved down to London at the same time as my brother and there was an ad in my favourite magazine, The Modern Review, asking for an assistant, and because they didn't pay anything either, I think I was the only person who applied who was willing to do the job. That was ace, Julie Burchill, who wrote Sugar Rush, ran the place, and it was so glamorous. And that gave me the confidence to apply directly to women's magazines like Company on spec (which means uncommissioned, you just write and say 'I write, would you like me to write for you?) and some of them did, so I sort of got by a bit, although I was also a temp, and between midnight and 2am I wrote a novel, because my brother was living with me and he worked in a computer place and bought me a little black and white screen Apple laptop and I went to bed later than him.


Where you at the Modern Review when they had to shut down after that whole debacle?
Oh god it was so cool. I was new to London and I was hanging out with these amazingly clever people and I didn't dare speak, not a single word, and when they made me talk I sounded like an idiot because my brain just froze. I remember Toby Young trying to get me to answer his phone properly, teaching me over and over again and I still couldn't answer it properly. That's how dumb I was. I think they must have thought I was totally batshit crazy because I used to just drink a can of coke for lunch, nothing else, because I was even too intimidated to eat in front of them. It was full sugar coke, or I would have keeled over, but still.

I was slightly a lunatic in my early 20s.

Anyway I was there exactly during the time of that whole debacle and thought it was aces going to the Groucho with all these famous writers table-hopping and Julie Burchill buying dinner for about 50 people who just ambled along and sat down, and didn't realise that when I came back to the office the next day and gushed about things Julie had said that that was part of what made Toby shirty about it all and secretly want to close it. So yes, I can reveal that I, I alone, closed it. It was all down to me.

So, I suppose it’s not really necessary to study writing in order to create good fiction?
Tricky question. Because I could say, no, and then people might say 'but you write rubbish fiction, duh'. I didn't even read much 'quality fiction' as a teenager, mostly Mills & Boon and Virginia Andrews, but my English teacher at school was always really nice about my writing, and I think if anything has improved it, it's practice, not reading. I sort of think there's such a thing as an ear for sentences, and studying writing will teach you some useful rules, maybe? but if you don't have that ear for sentences it'll only tell you what not to do. And I've never done a creative writing course or anything, but when I find those lists of Things Not To Do online or something (um, yes, which I'm sure is just the same as a Creative Writing course at a great university!) I either instinctively knew those rules (like only use he said, never he exclaimed, he breathed etc) or I completely break those rules and still got published (but am completely embarrassed to see that I've done them and they're dumb).


What made you want to write novels, for young adults in particular?
All my life I wrote snippets of short stories, where I just came up with a couple of names and wrote some dialogue or some little scene they were playing out. I don't know why I did that. I used to do it whenever I got hold of a typewriter, from about the age of 12. It didn't feel like something I'd ever do, it was just something I really liked doing. I always wanted to be a journalist because I thought it was really sexy and you met sexy people. And it is and you do. But I could never really break into it at all and when I went to sexy journalism parties with famousish people, I would just stand at the edges looking like a loser. Novel writing suits me a lot better. You do it alone, and you have to do the edits yourself. In journalism, sub-editors always take out your jokes. Young adult just felt like a much better fit for me, and I'd been asked to do it from the moment my first adult novel came out, and I didn't take the opportunity then because I didn't really get it: that you don't write down, you don't try to make the emotions simpler, you give it everything you give adult fiction, but you write about younger people. And now I get it and just want to get better.

Why do you like writing love stories... and killing off characters in the end (ahem, Wolfie)?
I'm always asked this, and it was the nature of the original series of CosmoGirl love stories, which my books were originally part of, but when CosmoGirl closed they were repackaged by Piccadilly as just stand alone novels. The brief was romantic weepies. I didn't know at the start if they were exactly the kind of books I wanted to write because I'd always been quite a humorous writer. But I think the original tearjerkery ones are my funnier books and often I wish I could grab back a bit of their lightness and sweetness, I seem to have veered a bit darker more recently. The next one will be funnier. Although it sort of starts with a death...

Are there any writers who have inspired you?
The people I think of as my favourite writers are Armistead Maupin, Truman Capote, Edith Wharton, and Peter Cameron. In a way they have some things in common, there's a mix of gossip and humour, although each is quite sad in their own way. But they're more interested in people than plots, and that is really the only thing I have in common with them, because I don't do whizz bang thrillers and twists. Although I did write one adult novel and it got rejected and it was ACE and everyone who rejected it was perfectly mad to do so because it had a real life actual plot! The fools! Maybe I'll rewrite as a YA some time, it's a comedy about a nutty brother and sister, and one of them gets a stalker.

How do you get your novel ideas?
I always start with the emotion, like with Two Friends I wanted to get down on paper the sadness that comes when you have this amazing friendship with a girl who is totally your soulmate and you think she's going to be around making your life better for ever and then something small or stupid changes you and it can just be gone like that (need emoticon for clicking fingers) and you feel like you'd do anything to get it back like it was, but at the same time you're petty and angry and want all your annoyances to be registered and apologised for even though the other person has nothing to apologise for, they were just changing too. Anyway, I don't think I got it right in that novel, unfortunately, but that was where it started, and that's where it always starts, me trying to work through something that made me feel something heavy. Then it's easy to put it into different characters and situations, as long as I've got that feeling of how I want them to feel.

Um,  just flicking through Rain, I can see  “she asked”, “she shouted”, and even “Rain protested” so is this not a really important rule?
The novel version of the film The Graduate has an interesting thing where the direct speech questions are always ended with a full stop. I loved that about it, because I always want to do the same, because that's how I talk, a bit, and want characters that talk that way. But I don't do that. And there's a thing I do, a bit, where I try to guess what will least annoy my publishers - I don't even know if it's correct! - so I often put 'asked' instead of said for a question because I have a feeling it's more grammatically correct. I know nothing about grammar! And when I do 'shouted', it's kind of a lazy way of putting across the mood, or just because said sounds wrong when people shout. I can't believe I said 'protested'! That must be wrong! I'm embarrassed by it!

I don't think any rules matter very much or can't be broken, if you know what you're doing. I don't always know what I'm doing, and I don't know most of the rules, but I would happily blow right through any rules I do know if it felt right. Instinct is always more sound than rules, as long as you can read it aloud afterwards and it doesn't sound ridiculous. Sometimes you write things in a kind of blaze of momentum and then the next day you think, 'what the hell was that?' and delete it all. Like dreaming a brilliant plot and writing it down when you're half-asleep still and in the morning it's a plot about spiders playing table tennis in the Vatican.

On that note, what advice would you give to aspiring novelists?
Practise, all the time. It's better to write little unrelated snippets when you're in the mood than to think 'I have to write my novel' and then put it aside because whatever you want to write doesn't fit into it, or it feels too daunting. Novels are about 1000x harder to write than even short stories, I think, because there's so much of an issue with timing and pacing and stretching things and keeping them believable and having people change and interact and keeping all the balls in the air. I always think my short stories read like they're a lot cleverer than my novels, even though I find them so much easier to write, and so that feels like cheating. Because they're not cleverer, I just don't have to take the characters anywhere and can leave them in a perfect place.

Did you get a literary agent?
When I wrote primarily for adults, I had an agent. I opened up the Writers & Artists Yearbook (is that what it's called? sorry, something like that) just wrote off to the 5 agents who lived closest to me and 2 wrote back and 3 said no, and then the first one that wrote back said she still loved it but her boss didn't want her to buy a student book, and the other one who wrote back took me on and helped me improve the book. There is literally no way I would have been first published without an agent, I'm sure of that - not just because of the way she introduced the book to editors but because she was so helpful in knocking it into shape and making it look like a real book. But when my second adult novel didn't sell very well, and Penguin asked me to turn the (honestly better than both of the others) third one into a thriller, it didn't really occur to me that they were allowed to not buy your next book, because I was very young and even more stupid, so I was all 'No! It is not a thriller! It is a stalker comedy! You must do it exactly the way it is!' and they were all like 'okay, uh, bye then!' And that was that with that book, and I think I've even lost the manuscript on an old broken computer.

But I was writing for CosmoGirl as a freelance journalist when the idea of a series of romantic weepies came up. It wasn't done through m agent (as she, er, kind of dropped me like a hot potato after the stalker comedy business fell through) and so I haven't had an agent since then. I probably need an agent more than any other writer in the world because I'm really badly disorganised and can't do correspondence or keep track of anything and would like to be mothered. But I'm too disorganised to get a new agent. It is on my to do list, which is probably all crumpled up and in the pocket of a pair of jeans that are at the bottom of the laundry basket.


What are your top 5 BELONGings?
MacBook.
Gold shoes.
Red dress.
Weird coat rack shaped like a teddy bear with its arms extended that everyone calls The Bearcrow and my husband and mother have both tried to throw away.
Coffee machine.
I'm a bit shallow! I don't have any proper sentimental things.

Kate Le Vann Recommends…

…The Best Places in San Francisco: I would love to be here without my kids, there are too many bloody kid places when it should be all romantic sexy single places. I'm going to try to get away for a bit on my own there. So I like the zoo and I love the Golden Gate Park, which has an amazing ornate old fashioned carousel. But when I'm alone I love all the little shops, the ice creamy Balamory colours of the houses, the neighbourhoods with their gorgeously grand houses and the little delis and coffee shops on the corner, Chinatown, the views, the lady who sings opera arias on the street, the way it's like a kind of ultra 3D Paris, all sugary like a big cake in the sun. Paris is my other favourite place in the world.

…Love Stories: I like writing love stories because that's all I'm interested in seeing and reading myself, pretty much. There are a lot of films I love that aren't love stories, but other things being equal, if I'm flicking through films on telly, I will always stop at Working Girl and Pretty Woman and Romancing the Stone and all the great romantic comedies.

...Where to Write: I seem to mostly write in bed (which sounds nice and skanky, eh?). I have to be on my own and in silence and it helps if I can turn the internet off because otherwise I can waste days and days just reading the Daily Mirror's 3am page and Twitter.

…How To Change The World(?): I don't really want to change the world because I would get it wrong. All my plans would end up in a scrunched up ball in those jeans that still haven't been washed. But I would like young women to be more interested in feminism, to stop hating women for being, say, thin, which seems to happen too much. I mean, I read all the same celebrity magazines, and am the shallowest person alive, but I don't enjoy the nastiness. I like the women who everyone else seems to hate, like Gwyneth and Keira and I don't know if I like them because everyone else hates them, which is something I seem to do, or because they're bright and talented and gorgeous, but anyway, I'd like just less of the hating. There are proper bad people out there and people get angry because Gwyneth Paltrow wants to show us how to cook a chicken.

...What to do about the "death of publishing" : I really love papery books because I like reading them in the bath. The internet and twitter and all of these things that are supposed to be killing publishing are just ways of reading more, aren't they? It's like I used to be dying to have more to read, and now I have all of the internet all the time and I can read all day long, even when I'm supposed to be looking after my kids. So it is all publishing, and it's the opposite of dying, it's absolutely thriving.

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