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 Michelle was born in Nyasaland (now Malawi), where her South African father ran the tiny Nyasaland Times, and her Belgian mother wrote a weekly gossip column. But the days of genteel colonial society were numbered, and in 1963 the family moved to England.
Michelle was educated at Wimbledon and at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. There she studied biochemistry and also made her first serious attempts at writing: two novels, written in a matter of weeks and quickly rejected (“with good reason!” she says), followed by a couple of younger fantasy novels—also rejected, although more encouragingly.
By then she was in the grip of the writing bug. She even managed to ditch the usual final-year laboratory project in favor of a written thesis. After college, she decided against a career in science. “I knew I wanted to write, but I didn’t think I’d be able to make a living at it, so I looked around for a day job: something that would pay the bills while giving me time to write. For some reason, I chose law.”
After years of being a successful lawyer, however, Michelle knew that she must still become a writer. So she quit her job, traveled the world, and wrote a novel—the first of many.
A Conversation with Michelle Paver:
What made you start writing?
I wrote my first story when I was five: a rip-roaring adventure about an escaped Tyrannosaur Rex and a rabbit called Hamish. I don’t remember what made me start writing stories. It was just something I knew I wanted to do, as soon as I could read.
What did you find the hardest thing to do?
Simply to keep writing—day after day, week after week, year after year, when I had no idea whatsoever if I’d ever get published. I used to get up very early in the morning in order to put in a couple of hours before going to the office, and sometimes I’d sit at my desk listening to the dawn chorus starting up outside, and ask myself if I was completely crazy, wasting my time like this. But the thought of giving up, of not writing, was just too bleak to contemplate.
How would you describe the “writer’s life?”
Marginalized, solitary, sometimes worryingly lonely, but above all, not in the slightest bit grown-up. I spend my entire time day-dreaming, and getting paid for it. That’s why I love it!
How did Chronicles of Ancient Darkness fulfill your earliest dreams?
As a child, my passions were myths, animals, and how people actually lived in the distant past. I pored over pictures of Stone Age hunters scraping hides and knapping flints. I bought a copy of Culpeper’s Herbal, and dug up my parent’s lawn to grow outlandish medicinal plants. And I read everything I could find on animal behavior: especially about wolves. (Wolf researchers such as David Mech, Michael Fox, and Lois Crisler quickly became my heroes.)
As I grew older, I managed to do a fair bit of traveling in out-of-the-way places: Iceland, Norway, South America, the Rockies. I worked as a volunteer on a wildlife survey in the Carpathian Mountains, where I heard red deer bellowing in rut, and found fresh wolf-tracks calmly crossing my own, and nearly lost my nerve when I came across an enormous pile of steaming dung. (Bear? Bison? I didn’t hang around to find out.)
What were your favorite books when you were younger?
As a small child, I adored Tove Jansson’s Moomin books (I wrote to her once, and got a lovely long letter back, all about Moomin’s dietary requirements), and then it was Tolkien; Alan Garner’s Elidor and The Owl Service; John Gordon (especially The Giant Under the Snow); all of Roger Lancelyn Green’s masterly retellings of the myths—Greek, Norse, Egyptian; and any anthology of ghost stories that I could get my hands on: M. R. James, of course, and E. Nesbitt. I was ten when I first read her Man-Size in Marble, and it kept me awake in a cold, terrified sweat for hours.
What is the most rewarding and enjoyable part of being a writer?
Two things. First, when (very occasionally) a scene comes alive the first time you put pen to paper. That’s what I write for: that rare buzz when it’s really going well. The second reason has to do with when I receive a letter from a reader, saying how much my novel meant to him or her. It’s an exhilarating feeling, as well as a privilege, to know that you have moved someone whom you’ve never met. |
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