HOW I WRITE
‘Nancy’s characters are wonderful blueprints’
India Knight
The celebrated Sunday Times columnist’s debut book My Life on a Plate was published in 2000 to huge critical acclaim – a book debunking the myth that all you need to be happy is love and marriage. Renowned for her wit, India Knight’s new book Darling is a retelling of Nancy Mitford’s
The Pursuit of Love.
The idea for reimagining The Pursuit of Love came from Nancy Mitford’s estate. I wouldn’t have dreamt of such sacrilege unless specifically invited to.
On one level, writing this book was my wildest dream, but when I actually sat down to do so, it became paralysingly daunting. I love and revere The Pursuit of Love, and it took me months to stop feeling like I was clomping about on sacred ground. I kept thinking, ‘Who do you think you are? How dare you? You’re not even English! Or posh! There’s been a terrible mistake!’ And then one day – months later – I thought ‘enough’. I woke up and that feeling of terror had gone. I don’t know what happened but I think I stopped trying to be awed and reverent, and just started having fun.
Nancy’s characters are wonderful blueprints, and I felt like they were old friends – I’ve known them since I was 13 – so it wasn’t at all difficult to reimagine them in a different setting and a different century. I knew exactly what they’d be up to and what they’d eat and wear, and where they’d go.
This is the first book I’ve written in a considered way. I’m used to journalism, where you have an idea and bang it out by lunchtime, so it’s taken me years to learn how to slow down with fiction. But I wrote Darling feeling completely free and unhurried. I have two chapters somewhere of a historical romance set during the Restoration that I abandoned. I’m OK with history and politics, but I got bogged down with the domestic details, which is what interests me most. What did the mattresses look like, what would the rug be made out of, what did they eat for breakfast and so on. This was just to write a scene where the heroine wakes up and gets out of bed! At the time, the research seemed overwhelming. Maybe I should try again.
When I wrote my first novel, I was single, had two small children and wrote at the kitchen table after they’d gone to bed. I wrote in a sort of panic because time was so tight. Now I write much more peacefully, though still often at the kitchen table, and I take my time.
The best piece of writing advice I’ve received is: trust yourself and get on with it. Quite good advice for life in general too.
✢ Darling by India Knight is out on 20 October (£14.99, HB, Fig Tree).