Eric Forbes: What’s your writing process like, Mary? What part of it do you enjoy most as a writer?

The most exciting stage is getting the first draft on paper, the free flow of images, phrases, dialogue. It’s a feckless, hallucinogenic, adrenalin-charged trip. There’s a fear of losing even a single idea. Any piece of paper will do. Just hand it over before I have a tantrum. How many great poems began on napkins in restaurants? Ideas arrive in odd ways (the odder the better): when driving a car, submerged in a bathtub, or trying to avoid useful work.

Things begin to take shape from an image or phrase (such as “fish make her think of love”) that I can’t shake, and then lead by association to something deeper. I follow a scent, hoping it’ll get stronger. I walked paths in our local watershed, musing on peculiar fish in Walton’s The Compleat Angler. That led to scouring old maps for streams buried beneath London, then to the two genetic rivers converging in Pegge, to her belated menarche, to her sexual jealousy, and so on.

All at once, something acts as a catalyst and the scene arrives in a rush. You scribble crazily and hurry to the keyboard for hours of white-hot writing. However, you need to come out—to eat, sleep, spend time with family. The next morning, you suffer the pain of warming up, building a new head of steam, until you get back in the zone. Even in saying this, I am romanticizing a process that can be exhausting and depressing. Writing is bipolar. Sometimes you’re brilliant, inspired. Other times you’re a mere comma counter.

See more of Eric Forbes' interview with me at his Kuala Lumpur blog, The Book Addict's Guide to Good Books.