Swimming Lessons

by Claire Fuller

‘Secret truths,’ you said, ‘are the lifeblood of a writer. Your memories and your own secrets. Forget plot, character, structure; if you’re going to call yourself a writer, you need to stick your hand in the mire up to the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder and drag out your darkest, most private truth.’

Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from a novel, from a chapter, from a line.

‘A book becomes a living thing only when it interacts with a reader. What do you think happens in the gaps, the unsaid things, everything you don’t write? The reader fills them from their own imagination.

Fiction is about readers. Without readers there is no point in books, and therefore they are as important as the author, perhaps more important.

all those plans of creating my own category and giving you up after the summer disappeared like a wisp of sea mist under the relentless energy of your sun.

Everyone needs a place to escape to, even if it’s only inside their head.’

‘It’s about believing two opposing ideas in your head at the same time: hope and grief. Human beings do it all the time with religion – the flesh and the spirit – you know that. Imagination and reality.’