nold Schwarzenegger and machine guns and blood and explosions. And I remember talking to my tutor and saying, I’m trying really hard to write this amazing Arnold Schwarzenegger book and I just can’t, I just keep writing really quiet little paragraphs about Dads. [Laughs] And he just pointed out, If you could write what you chose then everyone would write bestsellers and we’d all be rich and happy and it would be amazing. But actually you write what you can write. I really like dark stuff and I think that’s perhaps because of the reading that I have always done, that’s the stuff that’s really thrilling to me. Like Tim Winton’s In the Winter Dark, where there’s a something and you don’t really find out what the something is, but it kills stuff... I love that. I love not explaining stuff. I hate it when... like in [Stephen King’s] IT, when it’s incredibly frightening and it’s the most horrifying thing ever, and then it turns into a big spider that you have to tip over and it loses everything and it just all goes down the drain... structo: Literally down the drain in the case of IT. [Laughter] wyld: Yeah, exactly. I much prefer it to go like it is in real life, if something terrifying happens, you don’t get some sort of amazing closure on it, to go, oh actually the clown was a spider... structo: From outer space. wyld: Yeah! And you don’t have to grapple with the why would they bother? If they’re a clown from outer space, why do they care about some kids... oh he feeds off fear... Oh does he! I much prefer the idea that you’ve got no idea why this malevolent thing is happening and you’re probably mad and it’s probably your own fault. That’s what I like. [Laughter] structo: You mentioned your ma, and I was going to ask about it. Occasionally people ask us whether they’re of any use, and we have no idea because we’ve never done one. wyld: I think it’s different for lots of people. For me it was great. I also did my ba at Bath Spa, which was modular with creative writing in there. And for me it was the perfect thing, not because they teach you how to write, but because you get the time to take your work seriously. I think there are very different ways of approaching it. I think the American ones are perhaps a bit more specific, you’re shown a type of voice that’s considered to be good; from what I hear there’s a lot more direction
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