Interview with Mollie Baxter for The Lunecy Review

Questions by Norman Hadley

1. All writers experience tension between the write-what-you-know autobiographical versus the fear of betraying confidences. How do you handle that balancing act?

I think it begins with where an idea comes from. With prose (because my approach is slightly different with songs) the germ of the idea comes from an image or a scenario that catches my attention: why would a boy nail a cat to a tree, what would it be like to live back in times of yore when you’re sewn into underclothes for the winter, what if a Matryoshka doll was alive… that sort of thing. When it comes to the fleshing out of the story, you carry it round in your head for a few days/weeks, and you’re looking to give the story a context, an authentic depth of experience. It’s here that perhaps the autobiographical elements get drawn into it, because your richest store of experience comes from what you, yourself know – you use the paint you’ve got.

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