MY WRITING DAY
Joe Heap
The romantic novelist tells Lynne Hackles how he’s had to adapt from writing on the move
Lynne HacklesLynne Hackles
Joe Heap balances writing with being a parent to a baby and a three-year-old. ‘I try not to mix the writing and parenting aspects of my life, because it’s unfair on the kids,’ he says, ‘though I’ll sometimes put Peppa Pig on for five minutes while I go and write something down for later – it’s important to keep noting ideas as they come. We forget more than we think we do.
‘Before writing full-time I would write on the commute to and from work, or in my lunch break. I used to live in Glasgow, and my office was five minutes’ walk from the Gallery of Modern Art. Come one o’clock I’d wolf down my sandwiches and make a beeline for the gallery where I’d spend 45 minutes in their free exhibition. I wrote dozens of pages in front of a giant Kandinsky, this vortex of shimmering colour, before that disappeared and was replaced by something drab and figurative.