Kerry Hudson: on writing, her favourite writers and why she keeps finding herself in Hanoi

Kerry Hudson is the author of the exceptionally-titled Tony Hogan Bought Me An Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma. It's an exceptional read too - a coming-of-age book about growing up in tower blocks, oozing with verve, fight and dysfunction. Don't let the playful title fool you. These are hard times for the semi-autobiographical Janie Ryan.

It being Kerry's debut, one that has catapulted her on to a series of high profile literary prize shortlists, we decided to catch up with her and talk about her writing, her favourite writers and why she keeps finding herself in Hanoi.

Firstly, congrats on the book. It's done exceptionally well. What was your biggest hope for the book when you were writing it?

Thanks very much. It's been an ace and very humbling year. If I'd written all my biggest hopes on an envelope before publication half of the things that have happened wouldn't even have been on there. My biggest hope really was that I would be able to portray a segment of British society, the council estates and rough schools and dole cheque queues, that doesn't normally reach literary society and that I'd shine a light on that world with dignity, humour and honesty.

To Kill a Mockingbird has been etched into my heart since I read it on the steps of my tower block aged 13The book deals with adolescence and coming of age with bite and bittersweetness. The title itself is brilliantly descriptive too. What are some of your favourite coming of age novels and why?

Surprisingly, I realise I haven't read that many, and I've never read similar books for research for fear of being influenced by them. But I loved Jeanette Winterson's Why Be Happy When You Can be Normal, which is a sort of coming-of-age memoir in the sense that perhaps coming of age lasts well into adulthood for most of us, and To Kill a Mockingbird has been etched into my heart since I read it on the steps of my tower block aged 13.

With the narrator, how did you construct her? You treat her and those around her with warmth and hope and affection. There's almost a celebratory side to her attempts to triumph at life.

Janie came pretty much fully formed, drumming her wee fists on my back and demanding her voice be heard. The book is semi-autobiographic so I'm sure that helped but Janie is still very much a fictional creation. She's a fair bit of me but also lots parts of the angry, bright, funny and brave women I grew up with who were offered nothing from their upbringing and kept pushing at their horizons all the same.

I pretty much had to deliver my insides still warm on a plate, or indeed the page, to the reader.When did you start writing the book and what's the biggest lesson you've learnt about writing whilst working on it?

I started writing it in the summer of 2008 with a one-page outline written on a train from the Chinese border down to Hanoi in Vietnam. It took me six months to write in a gush of words, as though they'd been just waiting to be written, which I think was probably the case. The biggest lesson I learned was that without absolute honesty I don't feel like my writing is doing what it should do. I realised fairly quickly to do the job I wanted to on Tony Hogan... I pretty much had to deliver my insides still warm on a plate, or indeed the page, to the reader.

What are you working on next and what is the thing you're most worried about most confident about?

I'm just finishing up revisions on Thirst, a love story between a Hackney security guard and a young woman from Siberia with a dark past. It's set between Hackney and Siberia and, like Tony Hogan... it focusses on the loves, hurts and hopes of normal people with big, bruised, fragile hearts. I'm mainly worried about never, ever finishing it... since I wrote Tony Hogan... very quickly. I feel like I've been working on Thirst forever (in reality about a year and a half now with time off writing for Tony Hogan... promotion and a very full-on job) but I'm so close now to completing the revisions I can practically taste typing the end - and the pint of Guinness or three I'll be having when I reach it. 

So, so many brilliant, beautiful writers changed the way I saw the worldWho are some of your literary heroes?

So, so many brilliant, beautiful writers changed the way I saw the world: Jeanette Winterson, Jack Kerouac, Janice Galloway, Roddy Doyle, F Scott Fitzgerald, George Orwell, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Joyce Carol Oates, A M Homes, Walt Whitman, Sylvia Plath, J D Salinger and on and on and on...not a very original list I'm afraid but they appear on everyone's for a reason.

What's the greatest piece of writing advice you've been given?

Variations on the theme of 'writers write', 'show up to the page', or my own personal favourite, 'get your arse on the seat'. Even a bad first draft is the raw material you need to mould something better but without that you're basically wrestling with fresh-air. Also, when I was having a six-month-long anxiety attack before my first book was published about how Tony Hogan... would be received, a friend said 'Enjoy it. It's a privilege to be able to write and be published. If you don't like it, just stop.' So very true.  

I'll always finish with a read aloud to make sure I've got the rhythm rightDescribe your writing process. Where you work, what habits you have, what concentration aides you have?

I've developed a routine that allows me to juggle working full-time while also writing and actually find that almost as productive as when I've been lucky enough to have a few months off at a time to write in Hanoi. I write early in the morning, in the evenings and at least one day at the weekend. I have a crappy, little secondhand netbook that I cart around London in my red satchel and usually ending up looking out over London on the 5^th floor of the Southbank Centre. I do whatever I can to get the writing in but my most consistent habit is breaking down tasks for each day. So 1000 words a day when I'm writing new material and about 10 pages of revision per day when editing. I'll always finish with a read aloud to make sure I've got the rhythm right and then always celebrate with a few of those pints of Guinness when I finish a new draft... all work and no play etc.

What 5 books would you gift to anyone wanting to know the books that made Kerry Hudson?

Roddy Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy (cheating, I know)

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood

Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

J D Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

At some point I really want to write a 'Vietnam novel' Dividing your time between London and Hanoi, what do you do in Hanoi?

Hanoi is my wee bolthole for when I need to get away for a few months and write. I know it like the back of my hand now and all it's weird and wonderful nooks. In Hanoi I wake late, and cycle a very heavy but much loved red Asama bicycle to have a run at a gym on the roof of a shopping mall. I write for a few hours in one of the cafes along West Lake watching the fishermen, eat banana splits and too much Bun Cha and then go to see something at the local arts cinema, Cinematheque. I write about the same amount as I do when I'm in London but sleep, cycle and run a lot more - mainly because I'm also eating many more banana splits and bowls of noodles. At some point I really want to write a 'Vietnam novel' but as a society it's moving so fast I'm not sure I can capture a still moment of it in the way I'd need to.  

What are you currently reading?

I'm chuffed and honoured to be a judge for the Green Carnation Prize this year so I'm reading lots (and lots...) of fiction by fantastic LGBT authors. The standard so far is blistering so I feel very lucky to have such a lovely job of reading them!

Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma by Kerry Hudson is out now (Chatto & Windus)

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Kerry's website