David Nicholls: 'I Came To Everything Late'

(from The Guardian
by Megan Conner)

One Day has been followed by four years of false starts': David Nicholls. Photograph: Perou for the Observer

I was an early romantic. Falling in love was pretty much the only thing that occupied my mind at university. I would spend a lot of time flirting in bars and developing intense crushes. I'm afraid to say I was rather puppyish.

I don't find happiness a particularly interesting subject. My stories tend to be bittersweet because relationships aren't light and frivolous – they're the most dramatic and painful things that happen to us.

According to my mum, I wrote Cold Feet. I worked on four episodes. I wrote a lot of Pete and Jen's divorce and it was a huge break for me.

One Day has been followed by four years of false starts. There came a point where I had to get rid of all copies of the book and deactivate my email address on my website in the hope of being able to write something else.

Cycling has taught me that my instinctive hatred of sport has really been a fear of teams and balls.

I have been on benefits and cannot understand why people in need are being treated like scroungers by the government.

There are too many reasons why I was bad at acting [Nicholls went to drama school and took on roles while working at Waterstones in Notting Hill, London]. I couldn't do accents, I never knew what to do with my hands. And I over-emoted. I was constantly told to "keep it down".

I've tried all the tricks for writer's block: going against the clock, writing in streams of consciousness. This year I bought a new flat to use as an office [where Nicholls is pictured, right], but there's no furniture yet.

There's nothing wrong with being a late-starter. I started writing in my 30s, driving at 36 and became a father at 39. I met my wife on my 31st birthday when things were starting to fall into place.

Pop music is becoming less and less a part of me. I've turned to Bach in my old age.

I will always remember this year as the year my father died. Strangely my new novel is about family, so my dad is very much on my mind.

My childhood was sort of Narnia and Coronation Street. At some point I decided reading would be my "thing" and did it obsessively while the rest of the family watched TV.

Chilling out is not something I've ever really craved. I'm always slightly anxious. I can't lie in in the mornings and I'm a nervous wreck on holidays.

I'm disastrously swayed by criticism. But the ending of One Day is the only ending. It's the one thing I'm sure about.

David Nicholls's two-part drama The 7.39, starring Sheridan Smith, David Morrissey and Olivia Colman, will be on BBC 1 in the New Year