My next guest Sonia Overall has published two novels, A Likeness and the brilliant The Realm of Shells about the Margate Shell Grotto. She writes poetry and flash fiction, and is interested in the crossover of these forms. Sonia also writes and abridges work for performance, and is currently exploring creative collaborations with sound and visual artists.

You can see her work over the next week at The Old Look Out Gallery, Broadstairs:

A joint exhibition and residency with James Frost, artist, puppeteer and art history and theory lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church (aka her husband). The exhibition will explore visual, performance and text-based responses to the sea and its flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict.

And here are her sentences… (I do love doing this series – amazing how every one is so so different…) anyway, Sonia…

When you were small, you wanted to … be a writer. Or an Egyptian pharaoh. Or, ideally, both.

The one thing you can never resist is … heckling badly written film scripts, song lyrics, tv dramas….

You may not say it aloud but… every time I go into a seminar room to teach I wonder if someone will finally rumble me and ask me to leave.

The last time you went ‘WOOP’ with excitement was … recently at the Skabour festival in Folkestone. King Hammond sang ‘Monkey Boots’. I jumped up and down a lot.

Your five favourite words are …. disingenuous, potting shed, aplomb, pudding. I do love a good round vowel.

Additional thoughts:

Favourite writing place in Kent :
I write on trains and buses a lot, and while waiting for them. I endeavour to have a notebook and pen in every bag or coat pocket, but I often find myself resorting to napkins and the backs of envelopes. Cafes are good sources of inspiration, as is the outdoor labyrinth at UKC.

A book about Kent or by a Kent writer you would recommend:
I hope I can sneak this under the wire: The Go-Between by L.P Hartley. Hartley was born up the road from me in Cambridgeshire, but he was educated in Cliftonville as a boy before taking his degree in Oxford. School years are so formative that Thanet must have left a mark on his writing. It’s a bit of the Kent coast – and a novel – that I am endlessly drawn to. Can I get away with that?

***

Yes, you can, but only because I’m from Cambridgeshire too. Oh don’t moan anyone, it’s my blog…

And for a thank you to Sonia, I did try to find a nice round vowel for you to slip into your pocket, but failing that, here you go …

Clare Grant is known in our house as ‘Beautiful Clare’ and not just because of her amazingly and internationally popular blog, Three Beautiful Things.

In her blog, Clare records three good things that happen every day, and in a way that makes you look again at your own day. She manages not to be cheesy, and yet still makes me smile every time. Take this one…

“…and look, if you press this button, it makes the rinse noise, it spins and then it dries.”
“That is brilliant,” says Nick. He is nearly as delighted as Alec is by the 50p toy washing machine — just big enough for a wipe and a pair of toddler socks — that we found in the window of a charity shop.

She also writes a column in the Courier newspaper about her daily life in Tunbridge Wells, in which she is far from disgusted.

So here are her sentences:

When you were small, you wanted to … be a writer like Diana Wynne Jones, because she wrote exactly the sort of books I wanted to read. I reasoned that writing the books would be about twice as fun as reading them.

The one thing you can never resist is … an hour alone in a wifi-less coffee shop with the laptop, or a notepad and pen.

You may not say it aloud but… at the moment I much prefer being a mother to writing.

The last time you went ‘WOOP’ with excitement was … when my 19-month-old toddler said a sentence: “Me more bub.” which translates as “I would like to continue nursing please.”

Your five favourite words are …. Naptime, Mummy, munificent, rococo and vervaine

Additional thoughts:

Favourite writing place in Kent : Divinity Cafe at Trinity Theatre, Tunbridge Wells.

A book about Kent or by a Kent writer you would recommend:
One of E. Nesbit’s children’s books. I love the Bastables best, and then fairy stories, so perhaps Oswald Bastable and Others would suit, as it is half-and-half.

***

Thanks Clare! And shh… don’t tell anyone but here’s half an hour free time and this…