153: Linda M. James

Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Linda M. James, an author, poet, screenwriter and creative writing tutor, originally from Swansea. Linda (who explains the significance of the initial M) tells us why she is nomadic and about to make her 48th move.
Linda has been running writing classes for 20 years, and we find out about her MAs and her historical novels set in the Second World War, especially involving Spitfires. We learn about her flying experience, too – all part of the inspiration for her writing – and she discusses how she draws on her life experiences in her novels.
Linda explains how she had a good singing voice in school but, as a left-handed Protestant in a Catholic school, was told by the nuns who taught her at the age of 11 why she was ‘doubly damned’. This leads us to talk about these unhappy teachers, how it was a harsh environment, but that she had close friends with whom she is still in contact.

We discuss what education is about, and how the discipline she had at school made her something of a rebel. We talk about how it has worked her way through her writing. All her education came after she left school, e.g. at the Open University. Linda talks about how one should never tell someone they can’t do something.

Linda once lived in Vienna where she wrote poetry. We hear about how in Vienna she illegally played Mozart’s piano – and why it would have been worth going to prison for.

Linda reveals her writing process and whether she knows in advance how a story will unfold. She plays with identity in all of her writing and explains why this is in terms of her own background, and why she is fascinated by people’s roots.

We talk about the evolution of friendships and how the students she has taught are imprinted on her. We also find out why she enjoys writing about wartime, and the importance of using different senses when writing. She is a fan of Pat Barker and Kazuo Ishiguro, and we discover too that Linda keeps a diary and why the happier she is the less she writes and how her writing saved her sanity.