The Interview: Bookbag Talks To Diana Wells

The Interview: Bookbag Talks To Diana Wells

Summary: Sue read Odes and Prose for Older Women by Diana Wells with a wry smile of recognition and was rather pleased when Diana popped into Bookbag Towers to chat to us.

Date: 8 November 2013

Interviewer: Sue Magee

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Sue read Odes and Prose for Older Women by Diana Wells with a wry smile of recognition and was rather pleased when Diana popped into Bookbag Towers to chat to us.

• Bookbag: When you close your eyes and imagine your readers, who do you see?

Diana Wells: Women of my era. We children of post-war Britain with the constraints, through the fun of the sixties, then to work, marriage, children and the upsets this often entails, to retirement where many of us seem more energetic than our forebears. People like you!

• BB: Well, you've got me spot on there, Diana! I know that you published Odes and Prose for Older Women rather than your writing possibly be thrown away after your death - but how long did it take you to write the eighty five pieces in the book?

DW: Ten years or so! If I'm not writing something down I will probably be thinking about it! I have three completed novels unpublished as well.

• BB: Do you prefer writing in prose or in verse? And how did you learn to write so well?

DW: I really like doing both - some of the more humourous pieces seem to come out better in verse whilst sensitive vocabulary is more available in prose. Thank you for thinking I do write well. I love English but have no pretensions except that I can be pedantic in finding the correct word or phrase to assist in the scene I am trying to create. Whoever talked about 'the moral imperative of self-determination' did me a favour. I have tried many things.

• BB: Where and how do you write? With or without music? Are you disciplined in your approach?

DW: I put things together in the Dining Room by the window and on my laptop, with various bits of paper from scribblings in the car, the kitchen, the night! There's usually music on somewhere in the house but I'm fairly undistractable so only alarming noise would be noticed. I'm totally undisciplined about writing unless I have something essential to get down! Generally I will have 3 or 4 articles on the toolbar and prefer to keep revisiting them until satisfied.

• BB: I sensed that some of the pieces might be autobiographical. Is this correct?

DW: Yes, I think it is inevitable. For example - 'Searching for Simon' was directly linked to my son's posting in Iraq during that war. However most of the book is based on imagination and observation.

• BB: Will you achieve elderly calm?

DW: Definitely. Sometimes I already do!

• BB: Oh, I'm admiring and envious. How do you feel about getting older? What are the joys and what are the disappointments?

DW: I don't mind getting older - I can't change it and I have never yearned to be or look younger. The joys are the Grandchildren and the wearing out of key body components must be the disappointment!

• BB: Is reading important to you? What are you reading at the moment and what would be your desert island book?

DW: Yes, I do love reading but don't get much time for it. I am currently reading 'Gulag' by Anne Applebaum - a history of Russia's forgotten holocaust. William and I visited the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea recently. Terrible suffering took place there. My Desert Island book might be a French/English dictionary - then I could be busy topping up my other language.

• BB: You’ve got one wish. What’s it to be?

DW: An apparently impossible one - Peace in the Middle East.

• BB: Oh, that is a biggy, Diana. What's next for Diana Wells?

DW: I am revisiting one of my novels whilst always penning my 'Odes and Prose'. I enjoy it all and don't want to stop.

• BB: We don't want you to stop ether, Diana - long may it continue.

You can read more about Diana Wells here.

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