Andrew Miller: 'I was trying to leap out of my habitual mind'

After six novels, the author explains, fiction had begun to seem like a rather hollow formula. For his seventh, The Crossing, he wanted to find something new

When a book is finished it’s surface seals over. This can be a relief, a kind of freeing up, but it makes the day-to-day experience of writing the book hard to hold on to.

The Crossing is my seventh novel (the difficult seventh?). When I had finished the sixth, Pure, my intention was to “look up” and spend some time reflecting on what it was I was doing or trying to do. I was 50-and-a-bit, and had been writing fiction since I was 17. Did I want to go on? I had signed no contract in blood to say that I would write until I dropped, and though it was not obvious to me what else I might do – gardener? short-order chef? – I wanted there to be a reason for going on that was more and better than simply doing what I was used to doing, what was expected. What did writing mean to me now? What, specifically, did it mean to write fiction?

Continue reading...