War Tour
Lambert’s stories are written in a documentary style using imagined accounts to bring more attention to the victims of war. Her inspiration for The War Tour came from ‘campaign work I was doing for asylum seekers in Manchester. I was angry at how this country treats people fleeing conflict and persecution and this developed into looking into how war shapes lives and how we (I mean us in the UK) are obsessed with war. It is a spectacle on the news and then we go on holiday in war zones and stare sadly at graves. But at the same time, we turn our heads a way from it and think what is happening in the world is nothing to do with us. I guess I wanted to say it is to do with us.’
'In my favourite poem ‘The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock’, the speaker says ‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons’ and I think I measure mine in what I write and in cups of coffee.’
Lambert reveals that her passion for writing came very young, ‘I think it must have been when I was eight. A few years ago my Gran unearthed a booklet of poems I had written and illustrated and stapled into a book form and given to her. They were about cows and postmen.’ Far from the gritty subject matter Lambert now writes.
Lambert was very honest about the way she writes, ‘I used to write every morning in bed with a coffee, before anything could get in the way,’ a sentiment that I am sure many writers agree with. 'Now with wireless I have to get away from emails etc. So I often write in cafes. This gets expensive. I write ideas and early notes in notebooks and then I work on my netbook. I have to write lots of drafts. A story is very very rarely there in one draft. I like to share my work with other writers and get feedback. This is something she practices in her other role as a University tutor in both Edge Hill and Bolton with her MA students. To those inexperienced writers out there Zoe tells of how much background work she had to put in to create her final novel, ‘the stories involved a lot of research, so I spent weeks researching and reading for each story. I explored themes around war and tried to make connections between stories, so I’d write drafts of different stories, leave them, work on others and come back to them, then show them to my editor and work on more. The book grew in an organic and unplanned form. This is probably mirrored in the structure in the some of the stories which connect through a place and character but not in a regimented way.’
Many authors have a favourite genre in which to write and Lambert admits that she is ‘an issue based writer. I become obsessed with an issue or a theme and I try to approach it from different perspectives. But mostly I like to write about people. My stories are very people based, rather than about the plot.’
Still very close after the release of her novel, Lambert is thinking ahead, ‘a lot of my stories were about caring, illness and disability and I’d like to explore this further in novel form, but I suspect my novel will end up looking like a collection of stories. In my favourite poem ‘The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock’, the speaker says ‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons’ and I think I measure mine in what I write and in cups of coffee.’