Quickfire Questions with... Irene Yates

Fifty words on me: It’s a love/hate relationship this writing thing. When you’re doing it, it’s a killer, all angst and sweat and toil. When you’re not doing it, it’s also a killer, words racing round and round in your head, ideas jumping at you, structures presenting themselves. I know that once you’ve got it, it’s like something’s got you by the throat, you just can’t get rid of it. Even when you fall out with it and say you’re never going to do it again it just creeps up on you and you’re doing it in your head without even realising it. I look at somebody and I’m writing their story in my head. Sometimes I don’t know if it’s real or if I’ve made it up!

My first sale was…

An article to Woman’s Own, for ever ago.

My family think my writing is…

Brilliant, especially my 13 year-old grandson, Jack, who wants to follow in my footsteps and is at the moment on Chapter 9 of his latest novel – I understand this is page 22! He says he wants to be the next Irene Yates but I’ve told he needs to be the first Jack Archer.
My husband wishes I’d hurry up and make it big so that he could retire. Huh.

The best/worst thing about writing short stories for magazines is…

Best is sales, worst is rejections! Very worst is finding something in a mag just like something you’ve just sent off so you just know yours will be rejected.

Long hand first or computer?
Oh, computer every time. Used to be typewriter, so computer is wonderful.

On completing a story I feel…
Nice warm feeling in my tum.

When I run out of ideas I …
Read, read, read: a load more magazines, old ones, new ones, newspapers, letters, books, who cares?

Ideas come to me when…
I’m awake or asleep or talking or listening or thinking about something else entirely.

My biggest tip for new women’s mag writers would be…
Never miss jotting ANY idea down, you never know when you will need it. Jotted down ideas come in more useful at more odd times on more scraps of paper than anything else ever.

3 authors – dead or alive I’d like to invite to dinner would be…
Arnold Bennett, Charles Dickens and Maeve Binchy. And please could I have Elizabeth Taylor as well (not the film star).

Favourite writing outfit?

The nearest thing to hand.

Favourite writing snack?

Crisps and mugs of tea.

Daily Mail or Guardian?

Guardian, definitely. This is a zero tolerance house for D.M.

Corrie or Eastenders?

Both of them but going back ten years at least.

Best woman’s magazine story I’ve read during the last three months is…

Wouldn’t be able to choose, love most of them.