There’s this whole thing of being two people. You are the person you want to be – the writer – and then there’s this weird other life of going on tour and talking about the writing. And that really is weird. – Michelle Paver
At university – when I was supposed to be studying biochemistry – I had tried to write a children’s book about a boy and a wolf cub, and there was a paragraph in that which was from the wolf’s point of view. – Michelle Paver
For a novelist, the great thing about the Stone Age people is that we know virtually nothing about their beliefs – which means that I get to make it up! But it’s still got to be plausible. – Michelle Paver
The most remote place I’ve been to was in Greenland. I remember setting out for a solo hike from a small cabin, itself several hours’ boat ride from the nearest settlement. – Michelle Paver
I hate it when you see in films people with their anoraks flapping open in a blizzard. They’d be dead in a couple of minutes. It’s got to be real. It’s got to work. – Michelle Paver
I’ve wanted to write a ghost story for years, and my main aim was to write the most frightening ghost story that I could think of. – Michelle Paver
I’d been interested in animal behaviour as a teenager and had thought of studying it at one point. – Michelle Paver
It’s true to say that once I’ve got the bare bones of a story, I often get ideas from my own research trips to faraway places. – Michelle Paver
I’m not the next J. K. Rowling. We’ve got one already. It’s flattering to be compared to her. I like her books and loved the first three particularly, but apart from the fact that they’ve got young boys as heroes, they’re very different. – Michelle Paver
By about chapter six of ‘Wolf Brother,’ I was having so much fun that I knew I wanted it to go on and I couldn’t tell Torak’s story in one book. So I sat down, and it took me about a week to plan in broad outline all six books. – Michelle Paver
My thirties merged into my forties, and I sort of gradually realised that I don’t really want children. Now I’m glad I don’t have them. Part of that is because I have my books. – Michelle Paver
To get the feel of the polar night, I went back to Spitsbergen in winter. I went snowshoeing in the dark and experimented with headlamps and climbed a glacier in driving snow. – Michelle Paver
I sometimes wonder why I do so much research – I look at other successful writers, and I think it must just be so relaxing to write about flying horses or something, but I have to make it plausible. – Michelle Paver
It’s the little details I love. How to fletch your arrows with owl feathers, because owls fly silently, so maybe your arrows will, too. How to carry fire in a piece of smouldering fungus wrapped in birchbark. These are the things which help a world come alive. – Michelle Paver
Writing is a mysterious process, and many ideas come from deep within the imagination, so it’s very hard to say how characters come about. Mostly, they just happen. – Michelle Paver
To experience the northern forest in the raw, I went to northern Finland and Lapland, travelling on horseback, and sleeping on reindeer skins in the traditional open-fronted Finnish laavu. I ate elk heart, reindeer and lingonberries, and tried out spruce resin: the chewing gum of the Stone Age. – Michelle Paver
I definitely don’t write with any kind of ‘message’ or ‘lesson,’ probably because when I was a child, I used to run a mile from books like that. – Michelle Paver
I don’t use the Internet, as I don’t like living with lots of distractions. I have tried, but I found it a hindrance. as my sense of priorities goes out of the window and it pulls me out of my writing, particularly with email. I’d sit there for hours just replying to emails. – Michelle Paver
I rode 300 miles through the forest and ate all sorts of strange food. And every time ‘Torak’ did something new, like swimming with killer whales or kayaking, I thought I’d better go and do it. – Michelle Paver
Changing from biochemistry to law was easy because I was rubbish in the laboratory. I could never decide how much to put in a test tube because I’m not very good at maths. – Michelle Paver
In general, when I’m writing, I concentrate on the story itself, and I leave it to other people, such as agents and publishers, to work out who it’s for. – Michelle Paver
If you get a sense that your writing isn’t quite working, change it. Or cut it out. Don’t just tell yourself it’ll do, because it won’t. – Michelle Paver
For me, inspiration isn’t a sort of spark which lights the fire of the story. It’s more like a thread, one of many, which you can tease out of a story once it’s written, if you feel so inclined. – Michelle Paver
Have you ever held a snake? They are so strong. You can see why there are so many myths about them: they are unlike any other creature. It’s extraordinary how that little brain can keep everything moving in different directions. – Michelle Paver
When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1991, I asked him if he had any regrets, and he said no. I was a burnt-out litigation solicitor in my thirties, hating my life, and his cancer made me re-evaluate it all. – Michelle Paver
My novel ‘Wolf Brother’ is set in northern Scandinavia during the late Stone Age, so I was aware from the start of Norse influences. I used some Norse names, and the soul-eater Thiazzi is based on the Norse storm giant, Thiassi. – Michelle Paver
In a ghost story, usually you’ve got to hang on until daylight, and you’ll be alright. But if daylight’s four months away, then you have a problem. – Michelle Paver
I didn’t do it for the money. I know a lot of people say that, but if I’d wanted to be rich, I’d have stayed working as a city lawyer. I gave that up eight years ago and took a massive drop in salary, and I didn’t mind because I was doing what I loved. There’s plenty of material for the other five books. – Michelle Paver
