Jane Rawson

Yesterday I went to the office from 8-5 and wrote about electricity bills and women in energy and wind power policy and then I went to Embiggen Books and interviewed Jasper Fforde. Here’s me and Jasper talking about whether you can keep ten thousand ideas in your head at one time (me: yes, with notes; Jasper: yes, with superb memory), should you ever leave some out (maybe), planning out your book (probably a good idea, but neither of us do), teaching yourself to write (he’s confident it’s better than classes, I could go either way), reading (he’s not that into it, I would rather do it than anything else), jokes (good x 2), writing a book that’s about what happens when you get inside things other people have imagined and forgotten (he’s thinking of doing it; I already did but politely didn’t mention it), Wales (haunted) and setting yourself ‘narrative dares’ to push a story along (two thumbs up from us).It looks in the picture like I’m doing all the talking, but I swear I shut up 90% of the time. Afterwards 40 people lined up to get books signed by Jasper and two of them – bless them – also wanted me to sign a book. It was a lovely night and if you’ve never been to an event at Embiggen, I highly recommend you do so. Afterwards I had a lot of wine with my friend Rose who has just won the Viva la Novella prize, and that was very good too.