Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring, is Londoner

Описание: Tracy Chevalier is the celebrated author of Girl With a Pearl Earring. We meet the born American in her home in North London and get a glimpse at how she likes to write. Tracy also shares her feelings on becoming a well-known author.

1000 LONDONERS

This film is part of 1000 Londoners, a five-year digital project which aims to create a digital portrait of a city through 1000 of the people who identify themselves with it. The profile contains a 3 minute film that gives an insight into the life of the Londoner, as well as their personal photos of London and some answers to crucial questions about their views on London life. Over the course of the project we aim to reveal as many facets of the capital as possible, seeing city life from 1000 points of view.

www.1000londoners.com
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www.facebook.com/1000londoners
Twitter: @1000_londoners

1000 Londoners is produced by South London based film production company and social enterprise, Chocolate Films. The filmmakers from Chocolate Films will be both producing the films and providing opportunities to young people and community groups to make their own short documentaries, which will contribute to the 1000 films. Visit www.chocolatefilms.com.

TRANSCRIPT

I was writing a novel called The Last Runaway and it was set in 19th century Ohio. I was looking into what women did with their hands in their leisure time and quilting became an obvious answer. So, I decided to have my main character be a quilter. And then I thought, you know: If I'm gonna write about this, I really need to do it a bit myself. It uses a completely different part of my brain and I love that about it.

(whispers) Come on, come through, there.

I prefer to write longhand. I write in notebooks and then every few days I type what I've written into the computer. I just prefer writing with a pen and paper because it feels closer to me. The problem with writing something on the computer is that, you know, it looks so pretty, it looks so done. So, somehow you read through it, I mean I learned not to, but you read through it and think: Oh, yeah this looks ok. It looks kind of typeset, it almost looks published. And this is not typeset or published. This is very messy. And that's kinda how I think.

These are all different fabrics that are, some of them are from my own life. I was a bit of a hippie when I was a teenager and I had this sundress that was black with purple stars on it. So that's that bit there, the black with purple… It's so faded that it's grey now, I wore it so much. And then the bottom bit was this kind of North African market scene, where somewhere around here there's some fantastic legs from the market.

I grew up in a much more innocent time and I think I just would like to find a way to get back to that, to help people to get back to that.

See you can't quilt when you're angry. You can't sew when you're angry. You have to be calm. I went to Wandsworth Prison to talk to the guys about quilts and quilting. And we ended up doing a project together. It was really, really satisfying. And it was so cool to see these guys, you know these big beefy guys who are doing a lot of weights and have a lot of tattoos and who knows what they've been in for. I never ask, it's better not to. But they, they make these beautiful things.

Every now and then I think: Oh yeah, back when I wrote Girl With a Pearl Earring, nobody knew what I was doing, nobody expected anything from me. And just every now and then I think: Oh, it'd be so nice to be fresh and innocent again. And instead I'm that kinda jaded, old writer, just crankin' em out.