The story of Jack Plum started life as a radio play called Pig Paradise, which was broadcast by the BBC in 1998. At the time I wrote it, I couldn’t find Jack’s inner voice at all, and didn’t even know if I wanted to, so his character was explored entirely through dialogue with the younger Holly Lock.

It worked well and I felt no loss at not having Jack as part-narrator of the play, which had been the director’s desire. After the broadcast I thought I’d heard the last of Jack Plum but it wasn’t to be. Fragments, images and words kept shoving themselves into my head; I saw an inordinate number of pigs rummaging in fields and at times felt as if someone large was following me when I took the dog for a walk on the moor.

Eventually I understood there was more to be explored in the story of Jack. I sat down and began making plans for turning the play into a novel. This time I knew I had to get right inside his internal landscape.

It wasn’t easy finding Jack’s voice because it wasn’t a technical linguistic exercise; it was a question of being able to hear its nuances inside my head. The creative process is a strange beast. You have to find a way of opening yourself up to possibilities; you have to get rid of your internal censor; you have to listen and wait. And when I finally heard the first sentence from Jack’s inner world, that was just the beginning.

Long before my first book came out, I imagined what it would feel like. I had ample time to do this while I was in that seemingly endless “sold but not published” stage. During this stage I found myself at parties, saying things like, “Why yes, I’m a writer but no, the book’s not out yet.” People would crook their eyebrows at me and then lose interest, clearly under the impression that I was the sort of pathetic person who went about making self-aggrandizing yet unproveable statements at cocktail parties.

I told myself that it would all be different when the book came out, in ways I couldn’t imagine. And of course, this was true: I really couldn’t imagine it, because I’d never had a book come out before, nor had anyone I knew. I supposed that my life would change somehow, or there might be bright lights of some kind, or even, though I was ashamed to admit it, glorious song. Why not? This was the realization of a childhood dream! Why shouldn’t there be an aria or two? People online claimed to burst into tears in the bookstore upon catching sight of their debut novels; some asserted that they kicked their spouses from the marital bed so they could cuddle up with their ARCs instead. I couldn’t quite see myself doing any of these things, but I allowed for the possibility that, perhaps, publishing a book flipped some interior switch and just like that I would go from somewhat repressed to open and emotional in ways that led to weeping in public and/or cuddling with inanimate objects.

And then, when the book did come out, it was… different than I’d imagined.