Julia Green is the Course Leader on the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University, and has had three novels published by Puffin and three by Bloomsbury: Breathing Underwater, Drawing with Light and Bringing the Summer. She lives in Bath.
Learn more about Julia and her writing with a brief Q & A.
When you were Freya's age, what kind of books did you like to read?
When I was Freya’s age, I was reading books for A level English: King Lear and Measure for Measure by Shakespeare; contemporary plays like The Royal Hunt of the Sun by Peter Shaffer; novels by Thomas Hardy (Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd ) and D.H. Lawrence (Sons and Lovers). I read Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen). I started reading the Romantic poets about this time (Keats, Wordsworth) and also poetry by Dylan Thomas, Stevie Smith, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney. I loved Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle; Catcher in the Rye
(J.D. Salinger), and historical romances by Georgette Heyer and Jean Plaidy . . . I read widely, everything I could get my hands on! My parents loved books and our house was full of them. I had a brilliant English teacher called Miss Fox, and she suggested books to me too. We went to see a production of The Tempest by the RSC at Stratford-upon-Avon and I was blown away by how magical it was. I’ve never forgotten it. I use quotations from The Tempest in Breathing Underwater.
When you are writing, to what extent do you draw on your own experiences?
All my stories are a mixture of ‘real life’, closely observed or remembered, and imagination. Different combinations of the real and the made-up. I do use my experiences a lot, but always re-imagined. Memories, thoughts and feelings are transformed in the writing of them. But that’s not the same as saying my novels are autobiographical. They most definitely are not! My characters are not me. They are all imagined, created by me. But I need to feel a connection to the material I am writing.
How long does it take you to write a book?
Different novels take different amounts of time. I think and dream and imagine and write notes for a long while before I start writing down the story. Once I know enough to start typing on my laptop, it takes me about nine months to a year. Breathing Underwater took the longest: that’s because I wrote one version then realised there was a better way to tell the story, with the parallel sections of ‘This Summer’ and ‘Last Summer’, and I rewrote the whole novel completely! I’m very proud of taking that time to get it right. I’m a slow writer because I think so much, and rewrite and edit a lot. Plus I’m not writing full-time: I have another job, as a university lecturer teaching CreativeWriting.
What do you hope readers will take away from
I hope my readers will immerse themselves in the story. I hope they will be able to ‘see’ the places I describe and imagine themselves there. I hope they will be moved and feel strong emotions alongside my characters, going on their own emotional journey. I hope they will think about things: their own lives, choices, friends, families, relationships. I hope they will put down the book at the end and feel satisfied and uplifted.
If you could recommend just one book for everyone
Impossible question, but if you could only read one book, it would have to be a children’s book: Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. Like the best children’s books, it’s a book for readers of any age. It’s a beautiful and moving story. It’s perfectly constructed, I think, and profound about the connections between the young and the old, between past and present, and the importance of memory.