Adam Farrer’s Shelf Life

Adam Farrer is a writer, a lecturer and the editor of the creative nonfiction journal The Real Story. He has been a photo lab technician, an illustrator, a ceramicist, a musician and currently works at the University of Salford, where he is the Writer in Residence for Peel Park. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian, Lunate, Hinterland and Test Signal (Bloomsbury/Dead Ink, 2021). He is the author of two personal essay collections, Cold Fish Soup (Saraband, 2022), which won the Northbound Book Award, and Broken Biscuits and Other Male Failures (HarperNorth, 2025)

How and where are you?
I’m sitting in my box room/office. On the wall in front of me there is a Stan Chow portrait of David Lynch, a print of a French comic book panel by Robert Crumb and a pencil illustration of Winona Ryder in Heathers that I bought from Tiggy Chadwick, an artist I stumbled across on Twitter. This is the space from where I do my day job and a lot of my writing. I’m lucky enough to have worked from home ever since the pandemic, so I can easily slip into writer mode the moment my day job ends. I’m feeling well, but I’m also in the middle of cutting sugar from my diet, so if anyone crosses me there’s a fair chance I will push them out of the window.

What are you reading at the moment?
I’m a binger by nature and recently got into Stephen King in a big way, having decided at some snobby teenage stage that he wasn’t for me. I’ve just finished Billy Summers, am reading his latest short story collection, You Like It Darker and listening to the audiobook of 11.22.63. Needful Things is up next. I also always keep a couple of books on the go downstairs, which I dip into when I’m cooking in an effort to stop me from scrolling on my phone. Currently these books are Bruce Lindsay’s biography of Ivor Cutler, A Life Outside the Sitting Room, and Angela Hui’s Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter, both of which I’m flitting between.

And, of course, watching or listening to, or otherwise consuming?
I’ve barely had time to watch anything between my day job, book-related events and working on Broken Biscuits, but I’d been adding movies and shows to a watchlist for when I had free time, so I’m working my way through that list now. I’ve ticked off Mulholland Drive, two seasons of a documentary series about pro wrestling called The Dark Side of the Ring and I’m now finishing off a rewatch of Twin Peaks. I’m also watching a lot of guitar tuition videos on YouTube, so have spent hours learning the Dinosaur Jr and Screaming Trees songs I wished I could have played when I was 17.

What did you read as a child?
By the age of 9, I’d read every book in my primary school library. The librarian insisted they be read in a certain order, and I really wanted to get to the final one, which was about a boy and his kayak. I had no idea what a kayak was and wanted to find out. In retrospect I’d have been better off looking it up in a dictionary but ‘read a whole library’ can at least be added to my epitaph. The Narnia books were the first series I really went crazy for. Later, I fell for Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole books. I was also a sucker for a TV spinoff book, particularly the one related to Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers. If you’d asked me back then what I wanted most of all it would have been to arrive at school and learn that one of my bullies wasn’t coming in because they’d spontaneously human combusted.

Which books and/or writers have inspired and influenced you, and what have you learnt from them?
Before I landed on life writing, I was working on crime fiction but there was always something missing from my stories. It took a while for me to figure out that the biggest problem with my writing was its lack of humour. I was trying to write like James Ellroy or George Pelecanos, who use all this taut, muscular prose, but I’m not wired like that. Tough guy language just doesn’t flow from me. It was through Elmore Leonard and Newton Thornburg, both lighter touch crime writers, that I discovered a love of dialogue and a wariness of inauthentic-sounding lines and clumsy exposition. Alan Bennett and David Sedaris gave me permission to write about my family and use humour to explore challenging subject matter. Jo Ann Beard taught me about the rewards that come from digging into the challenging subject matter. I picked up the comic joy of specificity from Sue Townsend and also read a lot of PG Wodehouse, from whom I learned about the power of a good simile and language that bobbles along. They all taught me to introduce light into my work in different ways, which has been key in allowing me to discuss darker topics. I don’t like reading relentlessly harrowing memoir, so I’m certainly not going to start writing it.

What’s the worst review you’ve ever received?
I’ve been pretty lucky with reviews so far. Book bloggers and Goodreads have been particularly kind to me. I think the worst review I’ve ever had was from a guy who accused me of hijacking the genre of nonfiction to write about myself, which is a pretty neat summing up of memoir to be honest. He still gave me three stars, so that’s fine. Some writers think of 3-star ratings as the worst because they indicate that a reader has felt little to nothing about their work, but it’s the 1-star and 2-stars that sting me. I’ve had a couple of 1-star ratings on Amazon but whoever gave me them never said why. That sort of thing is like being drive-by egged by a stranger. It just makes you think “what the hell was that for?!” But I’ve accepted at this point that reviews are none of my business. As in, I accepted it halfway through the writing of this paragraph. I reserve the right to reverse that opinion at any moment.

Tell us a little about your creative process.
I think a lot about shape and rhythm when I’m writing. I can generally tell if a story isn’t working if the balance of those two things is off. Generally, I start with an idea, usually a potent memory, then work at it and work at it to see what, if anything, it becomes. I also regularly stop and read back what I’ve written out loud. I can tell at this point if the shape of it is off (e.g. is it unevenly balanced? Does it feel bloated at certain points?) and where the rhythm might not be working. If it sounds disjointed and is lacking what feel to me like the important beats, particularly in relation to dialogue, then I rework it until I’m satisfied. I think this is a hangover from doing a lot of spoken word when I first started writing, which is a great testing ground for new work. It’s terrifying, especially at first, but reading a story in front of an audience allows you to immediately find out what works and what doesn’t, and you’ll generally discover a community who will offer inspiration and advice.

How has your experience of the publishing industry been?
I kind of entered publishing through a side entrance, so haven’t really had the experience most people could expect. I found my way into writing through blogging then spoken word, got my first book deal by winning a Northern Writers’ Award and my second after being approached to pitch following the success of the first one. I still don’t have an agent, as I had just started searching for one when that first deal landed in my lap and have negotiated my contracts using advice from Society of Authors. So, there’s been a lot of feeling around in the dark or going to published friends and asking questions I didn’t know the answers to. In my experience writers are incredibly supportive of each other and are also happy to share their own experiences and answer any question that you might think of as dumb, so you don’t make the same mistakes they might have. My experiences of publishing have been hugely positive in the main. I’ve worked with a couple of incredible indies in Saraband and Dead Ink and now with a big five imprint in HarperNorth but have generally found people in the industry to be very hands on and easy to contact or discuss ideas with. I know that not everyone is so lucky with that sort of thing.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Most of the advice I keep in mind when I’m writing comes from Jenn Ashworth, who mentored me through the writing of Cold Fish Soup and is a real hero of mine. The thing I think about most often was her telling me to ask myself “so what?” while writing a story. I might want to share a bit of info or an anecdote and this question always makes me pause and interrogate myself. Why am I sharing it? What I am I adding to the story by including it? Does it deserve its place, or do I just want to talk about something strange or squeeze some gags in? Yes, it might be interesting that your aunt married an arsonist but what does that have to do with your essay about, say, adopting a dog? “So what?” It’s a great way to kill your darlings and keep your narrative on track.

What are you working on right now?
Currently, I’m tweaking a pitch for a third book of essays and staring at my unused Substack wondering if I have the time to commit to it. I was thinking of perhaps using it for short posts about things I discovered during the writing of the last book but didn’t make the cut. It’s a great way to repurpose the ideas that didn’t pass the “so what?” test but are still valid in their own right. There will be a whole essay in my third book about my aunt who, among many other things, married an arsonist.