Q&A with T.K. Howell
As Spring starts to settle in for many of us, what a wonderful opportunity to visit the forest! “Nell” by T.K. Howell is the newest addition to The Wild Umbrella, a story filled with trees and the refuge they can offer. Read below for a Q&A between Howell and one of our editors, Sophia Blush.
This story contains a fascinating blend of reality and unreality. Tell me a bit about your inspiration for this story, and why you chose to write about trees specifically.
Oh, that one’s easy. I’m a woodland manager by day, in the woods day in day out, so trees are my bread and butter. I spend a lot of time thinking on the timescale of an oak tree, visualising it changing over a period of decades. I’m not going to claim they talk to me but I do at least understand their language... which, I’ll admit, all sounds a bit woo-woo, but it’s totally scientific, honest! I find trees easier than people and, like Nell, I feel more at home in the woods.
Amidst this mystical story is nestled a bit of dialogue between Nell and Stacey about their life as teenagers. I found it grounding and revealing. How did you land on that exact conversation?
Yes, for that exact reason. I wanted to anchor what could be a quite twee story in the real world. Reading back, it’s quite a disjointed story, which was (mostly) deliberate, but I was concerned about it coming across a little too whimsical. I wanted Nell to be a real teenage girl and to have a real teenage girl conversation, which would both bring her to life while also reflecting her inability to ‘connect’ with the flesh-and-blood world around her. I was concerned that if the reader just spent the whole story in her head she could come across a bit ephemeral, a bit fey. I also wanted to counterpoint Stacey’s life experience to hers, to put Nell at odds with her surroundings.
I was struck by your descriptions of place throughout the story, especially in your description of urban sprawl. Can you tell me more about how your sense of place works its way into your writing?
Again, that’s partially work-related. I work on the outskirts of Greater London, within the M25, where these pockets of woodland abut right up against terraced housing, industrial estates and shopping centres and yet it’s totally possible to lose yourself in these green islands. You could sit in the middle of one all day and never see another soul. I’m fascinated by that transition, of the interplay between spaces and their various functions on an individual and societal level. I’m also interested in the conflict we have between having to be these incredibly social animals existing in the modern world with its constant sensory assault while sometimes yearning for isolation.
Who inspires you? Did you have any specific influences when writing this story?
This certainly relates to the above question, but around the time I was writing this story I was reading Sherwood Anderson and, particularly, Stuart Dybek. I think my writing has always been quite tight on things like dialogue and action, because those are what I enjoy writing, so descriptive prose can often be an afterthought. I don’t know, I guess I worry about coming across a little pretentious, a little showy. No one wants to be that writer, spewing out paragraph after paragraph of pretty but pointless words. Without wishing to fall back on that hoary old trope about the setting being ‘like a character in the story’ (urgh), I appreciate Dybek’s ability to use place as a catalyst for emotion, to use the descriptions of his home city as connective tissue rather than filigree. ‘Hot Ice’ particularly is a story that uses that sense of place to keep the occasionally surreal elements tethered to a very real world and very real characters.
