ANNE FINE'S BIOGRAPHY
My childhood
When I was young, it never occurred to me that I might be a writer. I think I must have thought that books were born on the library shelves. But I was good at writing stories, and I had a good deal of practice.
My primary school teacher came in every Monday morning in a rather grumpy mood. He'd look at the work calendar on the wall, which told us that we should be doing maths, and put his head in his hands. Then, "Why don't you write me an essay?" he'd suggest. He'd write a few titles on the board - things like, A Day in the Life of a Lost Coin, Description of my Granny, or Adventure at the Seaside - anything like that. Then: "I want absolute silence till break-time" he'd say, nursing his hungover head. "The first person to whisper gets the strap."
I don't remember him ever giving anyone the strap (though we did keep very, very quiet, just in case). I loved those double lessons more than anything in the world (except for reading). No endless discussions. No sharing of ideas. No realising that someone else had also had your brilliant idea. I covered pages and pages, writing fast, hiding my work from the girl beside me. And I learned to judge the length and arch of a story. It was the best training I could ever have had, though I still didn't know I'd be a writer.
At school, I enjoyed languages most, and studied French and Spanish, along with History, for A levels. That meant there was no room for English, and so for my whole life I have been able simply to read what I want when I want, and only for pleasure or interest. I suspect that this has been really important for the way I write, making it so much easier to think always of the reader.
And then ...
I studied Politics and History at University, and the interest in political issues shows up in many of the books. (If you're ten or older, have a go at The Granny Project. And after that, if you're not the sort to get nightmares you could try The Road of Bones. I taught in a girls' secondary school for a year — exhausting! — and then moved with my husband to Oxford, where I worked as an Information Officer for Oxfam. I was only in this job for two years, but still it changed my attitudes to money, to 'things', and to what is truly important in life, for ever.
In 1971 my first daughter was born. Unable to get to the library in a snowstorm to change my library books, in desperation I sat down and started to write a novel. Clearly this was the right job for me, for I have never stopped writing for more than a few weeks since.
My husband's job took us to California, Arizona, Michigan and Canada, where our second daughter was born. In 1981 I returned to Edinburgh, and a few years later moved to County Durham, where I now live quietly in a stone house beside a river with Richard, my partner of of over twenty years. The list of books has grown longer and longer, and whether writing for children or adults, I still work mostly with a pencil and rubber in absolute silence. But I'm not totally out of the ark. I use a computer to do most of the endless corrections, and everything else. I still hide my work if anyone walks past, and wouldn't dream of talking about what I'm writing or let a soul look at it until it's completely finished. Oh - and even after all these years I still prefer reading other people's books to writing my own!
A lot of my work, even for fairly young readers, raises quite serious social issues. I believe that many personal decisions have a social or political resonance, and the way people try to pick their way through tricky family situations interests me. But people won't read books that don't hold their interest, and since I still adore funny books and write for the reader inside myself, I always end up with the kind of book I myself would have loved to read (if only someone else had bothered to write it for me).
If you need to know more about Anne and her writing — for example, for a project — the best place to find information is in An Interview With ... Anne Fine.
Published by Egmont, £2.99:
ISBN 978-1-4052-0053-0
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