A day in Arlesey with . . .
. . . Sally Abbott
Sally Abbott, writer of the RTS nominated BBC1 drama The Coroner, often gets up after her kids have gone to
school and has lived in Arlesey for 13 years with her actor husband, Michael Begley and two teenage children.
How does your day start?
Well my husband is an actor, he’s in Matilda the musical and
we’ve worked out that the quickest way to get him home
in the evening is for me to pick him up from Letchworth
station, about 11.30 pm, six evenings a week. When we get
home we talk for about an hour and half because it’s the only
time we have together at the moment. So quite often I start
the day late, I might get up at 8.30 and the children have
already fed themselves and gone to school. I need at least 7
hours sleep I can’t function on less.
I check Facebook and Twitter first thing. I do this because
as a writer most days you’re on your own, social media is the
watercooler for us writers. Its also a great source of research
for characters.
I start work about 10, where I read articles on line and
research online, and actually that is really, really important
for me I would say most of the time, if you were to look at
me, it looks like I only work four hours a day but I’m actually working
for about 12 hours a day, a lot of my work is thinking and processing.
What are you working on at the moment?
Writing is constant problem solving, I’m writing the Coroner at the
moment and I can’t sleep at night because I’m constantly thinking
what is the clue or how did they die? I find I watch a lot of telly so I
know what else is on and what’s going on in the industry so my ideas
are fresh and original, but also when I watch telly my subconscious
often solves these problems for me. The second series of The Coroner
is about to transmit in November, but we’re working on a third series
Image: Courtesy of the BBC
So where do you work?
Well I used to have an office upstairs in my house, but I found I don’t
like working in my house because I like to go out to work, so now I go
out of my back door walk two steps and work in my shed. And that is
me leaving the house to go to work. It means I can leave work in the
shed. Although I am always working in one way or another. Most days
I spend a quarter of the day on the phone.
Questions by Jodie Chillery
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on the button issue 50 October 2016 |
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