Andrew Clover

Published May 22, 2013 | By Laura

Andrew Clover (Photo, Maria Head.)

Andrew Clover is the author of the Dad Rules column published in The Sunday Times Style. Learn Love in a Week is his first adult novel. We talk about his brilliant solution to writers block, who’d he like around for dinner and his new novel…

Can you tell us about your novel?

It’s called Learn Love In A Week. It’s about a wife called Polly who chucks her husband, because he’s too grumpy. He has a week to win her back. The reason is she gets an offer that no woman could refuse… She meets a man called James Hammond. He’s her ex. He’s her Road Not Travelled. He’s also attractive and rich and in a week’s time he’s inviting her to his hotel in the countryside, because he wants to give her the job she’s always wanted. He also wants her. Should she accept? Her best friend says: ‘Go’, but she’s stuck with a skanky man who resists commitment the way a dog resists the bath. Polly’s husband says: ‘Stay… I can change.’ But can he? After ten years, can you learn to love again? And if you could, would you still choose your partner?

Is it based on the Dad Rules columns that you used to do at the back of the The Sunday Times Style magazine?

Actually yes. One week I wrote about how single female friends would always come and visit when they’d been chucked, and they’d drink wine in the kitchen, and they’d tell me about the different kinds of terrible men you can find out there. (You can go for an older man. That’s like getting a rescue dog. He’s got his own basket. Problems will emerge.) The next week I did a piece called How To Make A Man Propose which got the best response of all my pieces. I got offered radio interviews, magazine features, even a slot on German TV. So that advice became the starting point for Learn Love In A Week. In fact I stopped the column, and concentrated on writing a novel. It took me wayyyyyyyy longer than I expected, and it seems another lifetime when I’d be actually offered work. I’d love to do another column now. Love Rules – that’s what I want to do. Each week, I’d tell a funny true story, about an incident where I learn something about love. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Make me an offer, someone! I’d enjoy writing another column. Actually I’m rather enjoying this. Can you make a living, sitting at home, typing out answers to questions?

Did I plan everything out, or did I just start writing?

I love that question! Only a writer would ask it, and it goes to the heart of what makes work troubling on a daily basis… I sort of plan. I write the plot out over and over again, in a sort of typed out brainstorm, and then I depart from this whenever I get a scene in my head. So I spend loads of time planning the story, but never actually have a final treatment, from which I work. Also, while doing these brainstorms, I change everything, all the time – not just the names of the characters, but the style of the writing, even the genre… The only rule is that I must write 3000 words in a day – doesn’t matter what it’s about, doesn’t matter if it’s good… I end up with massive files of stream-of-consciousness but they get so long it’d be almost impossible to go back and read them. That’s always the worst part of the process. I feel I’ve created a kind of vast swamp of confusion, and I fear it’s going to drown me.

Do you edit as you go along?

A bit. Generally I’ll spend an hour or so, at the beginning of the day, by polishing up what I did the day before. But I try to move on from that as soon as possible. I think editing is for cowards. You need to venture into new ground. I think writing a book, is like exploring an empty house, in the dark. You know that there’s something out there, waiting to be found, but you feel terrified, as you creep into each dark, empty room. But you’ve got to get in there! Get in there, and start lighting it up! Soon you’ll have a sense of the whole house, and it’ll all be less scary.

Who would be your ideal dinner party guests?

That’s a nice question, and one I ponder each day. I have this little meditative ritual that I do each morning. It’s basically a psychic exercise – the one that Malcolm teaches, on the penultimate day of Learn Love In A Week. At the end of it, you get to summon your heroes, to ask them for help. I used to call on Dickens, for his fluency, and Jane Austen, for her understanding of the heart, and PG Wodehouse, for his warm, comic prose, and Shakespeare, for everything. But then gradually, I just went for Shakespeare. For about a minute, each day, I imagine looking into those warm, brown eyes, and I feel full of peace and love. Sometimes I’ll mouth a sonnet, often the one that goes: ‘in these thoughts myself almost despising/ Haply I think on thee, and then my state,/ Like to the lark at break of day arising/ From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate…’ I really do love Shakespeare. So if I could have an ideal dinner party, there’d just be the two of us. Why bother with the others? Jane Austen would be too quiet and polite. Dickens would dominate. Wodehouse would know he was outclassed, and, to be honest, he’d be wanting to do what I’d want… He’d just want everyone to shut up, so he could chat with Shakespeare. Who wouldn’t?

What would you take to a desert island?

Thank you so much for asking this. It’s probably my greatest vanity – pondering what I’d say, the day I’m invited to go on Desert Island Discs. I often think I’d make all seven tracks be from the Electric Light Orchestra. I’d like that accolade. “He was the first ever to have all seven tracks from the ELO”. I just find something endlessly funny about them…. People normally say with a band: ‘I like their early stuff…’ I like the ELO’s later stuff. I like to imagine Jeff Lynn wondering round off his head, saying things like: ‘I feel like a genius today… Hire me the London Symphony Orchestra, and some bagpipes. I’ve got this idea about a man who falls in love with an alien…’ So, yeah, I’d take the ELO to my island, and a complete Shakespeare, of course, and a ukulele. For the last year, I’ve been trying to play Over The Rainbow like Iz Kamakawole. After thirty years I’d crack it.

Arrow, May 2013.

Why write a romantic comedy?

It’s the best genre. It’s the only genre. If someone says; ‘I’ll tell you why I fell in love…’ I’m instantly hooked. So you’ve got to write about love, and you’ve got to make it funny. That’s the writing I respect most, but, strangely, it’s not common. My agent says no one’s writing funny books anymore, because everyone just wants a story that makes them cry. I say: well… then I can be the only one! Surely everyone wants that – to fill the world with love and laughter. I do see the point of what my agent says… Comedy is about breaking plausibility or emotion; to be held by a long story you’ve really got to believe the story and care. But I’m trying to do a mixture of both.

Who’s your favourite character from fiction?

Ah! I was reading Nicholas Nickleby last week and there was that hilarious theatre manager who tells Nicholas how all his family are on the stage. There’s a donkey who “went on in the pantomime, but he was too broad, too broad…” That theatre manager really made me laugh.

Which book made the most impact?

Catcher In The Rye probably. I picked it up at about 5 pm absent-mindedly and I missed tea and I just read all night. I was just transported. I love the way the action is so small and yet so huge. It’s really just a few things that happen, after Holden gets kicked out of school. In fact now I think about it, I was probably thinking of it with Learn Love In A Week, which is trying to do the same thing – be very conversational and light, telling all the things that happen to these two people, just after they get kicked out of their marriage. I reread Catcher recently. You always hear about how Holden’s the archetypal disaffected teenager. But reading again recently I was struck by how polite he is. I love it when he’s on the train, and he meets the mum of that kid who’s an arse – he’s the kind of kid who’d flick wet towels at you in the shower – but Holden can’t resist telling the mum how popular her son is. I find that heartbreaking. I also love the idea of describing someone as the sort of person who’d flick wet towels at you… That’s the way to describe a character, isn’t it? Give one detail about them: let the imagination supply the rest.

What’s your typical writing day?

Right now I’m waking very early, because it’s so light. This morning, I took advantage of the time, by reading. I finished Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen, and got that wonderful feeling that the close of a great book gives – I felt still, but slightly teary. Then the girls got up and it all kicked off. I cooked porridge, I fetched tights, I was sent off to find the right tights… That’s typical. After dropping girls at school, wife at station, I then run in the woods, and I go through the little ritual that Malcolm teaches on the penultimate day of Learn Love In A Week. It works every time. For about five minutes, I stand under a tree, and I feel blissed and loving. Then I open my eyes. I pat my dog, and thank her for guarding me. Then I go home and I write as fast as I can… At 3 o’clock I realize I haven’t written nearly as much as I meant to, so the house resounds with loud manly swearing, then I rush off to fetch the girls…

What was your book deal moment?

Ooh. My wife bought me this expensive Brunello wine for Christmas, and I kept it and kept it waiting hopefully for the moment when my book was finally sold. But then someone eventually took the wine and drunk it. (I’m still trying to find out who). But the book deal came in as I was in the school playground, waiting to pick up my daughters. The phone rang. ‘Hi,’ said a lovely voice, ‘it’s Gillian, your new editor…’ It was glorious. Not only was I incredibly happy and proud and relieved, but I also saw instantly that Gillian and I were going to have a great time working together. That evening I came home and there was some cheap Merlot that had been opened the day before. It still tasted good.

Do you write in silence, or with noise?

Ooh no. Absolute silence. I’ve moved to the countryside, to get the silence, and still I work with thick ear plugs in. I always want to trust that what I’m writing is true – that the characters are alive, that the pacing is just right, that the expression is just right – and not some brainy thing that I’ve thought up. So it’s got to be silent.

Do you ever get writer’s block?

No. The way I see it… people who get writer’s block are just refusing to write badly. I write badly, a lot. I can say that with pride. This is my first adult’s novel, but I must have written at least 50 complete works, if you include all the unpublished novels, and plays, and stand-up shows, and gameshows, and biopics, and thrillers, and diaries and… You have to write a lot to find what you actually do best. Even this year, I’ve written a novel, a kids’ story, and a romantic comedy that will never be seen by anyone. (I have written another novel which, I hope, they will). You’ve got to keep writing. You’ve got to keep sifting for the rare moment in which you put down something halfway worthwhile. Learn Love In A Week ended up 93 000 words. I’m pretty sure I wrote at least 3 million. Some scenes were rewritten over and over. I got that from doing stand-up comedy. I did seven one man shows at Edinburgh, and three of them were real hits – rave reviews, sell outs… But those hits – there was always a point where they were car crash bad. The difference was polishing. You can perform the same show 80 times, and on the 81st there would be something you’d tweak. Why not rewrite a book 81 times? You have to. No one reads anymore. You’ve got to be brilliant to stand a chance of even being read!

Could you give five tips for new writers?

Mmmmm. OK.

1) Care about quantity, not quality. Commit to writing a set amount each day.

2) Do that every day, after a while you’ll start doing something good.

3) Try not to judge it. Just keep getting it down till you’ve reached the words The End.

4) Now judge it. Get people to read it. Try telling people the story, and see if they’re held.

5) If they are, be prepared to rewrite 81 times. If they’re not, be prepared to start all over again. Do it joyfully. Write for the sheer joy of it. I wish you luck (you mad idiot!) I wish you luck.

Learn Love in A Week by Andrew Clover is out now (Arrow, £6.99)

For more information on Andrew, visit his website.