Ways To Live Forever

A word of warning, this book will make you laugh, it will make you smile but it will also make you cry.
But it’s a book everyone should read. It’s a book about death. But more than that, it’s a book about how to live. And however long your life will be; this book teaches you about living life to the full and making the most of every single day.

It comes as no surprise to discover that Waterstone’s have chosen Sally Nicholl’s novel about a terminally ill boy as their Book Prize. But what does come as a surprise is that this novel is a debut novel and the author is just 23 years old.
Here Sally reveals why she wrote the book and much more.

Jane: Where did the idea for the novel come from?
Sally: It was something that had been at the back of my mind for a while. I had a friend whose mother died, and a couple of other friends who were ill. There are a lot of books written about death, but most of them are about grief, not mortality. I wanted to explore what it would be like to be a young person and know that you only had a few months left to live.

Jane: How did you research the novel?
Sally: I started doing some research about children with terminal illnesses, and the more stories I read, the more I realised that this was a story I really had to tell.
I read as many books as I could find about what it feels like to be dying and I read what fiction there is written from the point of view of dying children.
Some of the best of these are listed at the back of Ways to Live Forever. Then I went and talked to nurses, hospice nurses and social workers at my local hospitals; people like Annie who work with children with cancer. They answered a lot of my practical questions.

Jane: It sounds serious stuff.
Sally: I also did some fun things as research. I read the books I wrote when I was eleven. I watched ‘The Exorcist’ on my own late at night. And I ran up the down escalator at my local shopping centre – and got some very odd looks from passers-by!

Jane: Did you always want to be a writer and when did you start writing?
Sally: I've wanted to write for as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl I used to spend my lunchbreaks wandering around the school playground making up stories.
Most of those stories never left my head, and although I did write one or two of them down, I never wrote anything longer than a short story when I was at school. I started writing seriously when I was twenty-two and began the novel that became Ways to Live Forever.

Jane How do you go about the process of writing a book and how long does it
take?

Sally: I start with the basic idea - something as simple as 'I want to write a book about a child who is dying'. Then I start asking questions, like who is this child? How old is he? Who are his family? What are their stories? I try out a few different ways of telling the story until I find one that works, and then I start thinking about the bones of the plot. For 'Ways to live Forever' those bones were all the questions Sam wants answering and the things he wants to do.
I then start getting ideas for scenes or things I want in the book. These will be things like 'There should be a list of things that might happen to you after you're dead' or 'there should be a scene with snow'. I'll write these scenes in any old order - although I will know roughly where in the book I want them. I keep writing until I have all the chapters that I need to tell the story and then I rearrange them into a book-shape. Then I sit down and read it.
Usually at this point, I hate my first draft - it only has a vague resemblance to a novel. I now have to go through it deleting and rearranging all my chapters and making sure that all the joins work, then reading all the way through and doing the same thing until finally I have a version that I like.
The whole process takes about a year - with 'Ways to Live Forever' I think it was ten months.

Jane: Do you plan to stay writing children's books?

Sally: At the moment, yes. I love children's books and I don't feel like I really know what it is to be an adult!
I would like to write adult books one day, though. I have a few ideas in my head that I think are really for adults.

Jane: Which writers do you admire?

Sally: Oh, loads. Homer, I really wish I'd written the 'Iliad'. Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Dickens, Kipling, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky ...
For children - Philip Pullman, Meg Rosoff, Kipling (again), Frances Hodgson Burnett, Hilary McKay, Richard Adams, Mary Norton, Roald Dahl.

Jane: What were the last five books you read?

Sally: 'Just in Case' - Meg Rosoff, 'Ruby Parker Hits The Small Time' - Rowan Coleman, 'Split By A Kiss' - Luisa Plaja, 'Notes From An Exhibition' - Patrick Gale
and 'The Other Wind' - Ursula le Guin

Jane: What are your five favourite books of all time?

Sally: 'The Lord of the Rings' JRR Tolkien - This was my favourite comfort book when I was a teenager. I used to know whole chunks of it off by heart.
'I Capture the Castle' Dodie Smith - Because I've always wanted to live in a castle.
'Jane Eyre' Charlotte Bronte - Jane is a fantastic character, this book has such a great plot - and I've always had a bit of a thing for Mr. Rochester.
'The Secret Garden' Frances Hodgson Burnett - This book has everything - magic, elephants, gardens, mystery, dying children, people with Yorkshire accents ...
And I can't think of a fifth, because of all the great books picking one would exclude from the list. Can I say I'm still reading in the hopes of finding a fifth?

Jane: Do you keep a notebook?

Sally: I've always loved the idea of a writer's notebook, but I've never managed to keep one. If I have an idea for a scene, I usually just write it straight away.

Jane: What response have you had from readers after WTLF was published?

Sally: I've had some lovely responses on the website my publishers made for me - www.waystoliveforever.co.uk. Some people said that reading the book made them less frightened of dying, others that it's reminded them of why they love reading, or has made reluctant children start reading again, which is fantastic. I've had positive responses both from people who've had direct experience of the things that happen in the book and from people who thought they would hate it and loved it.

Jane: What are you working on at the moment?

Sally: I’ve nearly finished a novel called 'The Midnight Hunter', which is based around the myth of the green man, who’s the pagan god of summer. He’s born in the spring, grows through the summer, dies in the winter and is reborn again in the spring. I'm fascinated by damaged people and I love the idea that someone can be so powerful and yet so vulnerable at the same time.

Jane: What advice would you give aspiring writers?

Sally: Write the book that only you can write. Remember that you'll only ever be a second-rate J K Rowling or Enid Blyton, but you're the best Sally Nicholls (or Jane Bloggs, or John Smith) that anyone will ever be.

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