However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

I was always influenced by language.

If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.

When you are young you don't always realise how full of doubts everybody is.

i wish i was away in Ingo far across the briny sea sailing over deepest waters where neither care nore worry trouble me

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.

Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.