Who: Andrea Wulf

Claim to fame: Bestselling author of The Invention of Nature, The Brother Gardeners, Founding Gardeners, Chasing Venus, and the co-author of This Other Eden. The Brother Gardeners was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2008, the most prestigious non-fiction award in the UK and won the American Horticultural Society 2010 Book Award. ‘The Invention of Nature” won the Royal Society Science Book Award 2016 and  the LA Times Book Prize 2016.

Why’d we pick her, in ten words: She’s a trained design historian turned bestselling, award-winning author.

Where to find her: On her site and on Twitter

When did she first want to become a writer: “I always wanted to be either a writer or a painter – but luckily, I went for writing.”

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Let’s start with the basics: What time of day do you start writing? Is it easier for you to write early in the morning? Late at night?

Mornings, and sometimes, I have really good writing afternoons, but I’m absolutely useless in the evenings and nights (those are the hours of eating, drinking, partying and seeing friends, no?).

Where do you do your writing?

A few years ago, I converted my attic into a study. I have the best views over the rooftops of London. It’s light, quiet and I can see the world below me without getting distracted. It’s a writing heaven.

What’s your preferred tool for writing—a word processor like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, etc.? A pen and paper?

A Mac laptop. But when I work on structure and narrative pace, I need to do everything on paper. I end up with bits of paper scattered all over the floor. For days, I tiptoe through the chaos and move the papers around to plot structure.

Do you listen to music when you write, or do you prefer silence, or something else in the background?

Silence – 100 percent. Iit actually drives me crazy when I work in libraries and someone even breathes too noisily next to me.

Do you have any pre-writing rituals or habits?

I can’t start without a proper coffee made on my magnificent Italian coffee machine.

How many words a day do you produce, or try to produce? How much of that ever sees the light of day?

I have successfully avoided to have a word count hanging over me – I tried but it completely stifled me. I spend so much more time reading, researching, restructuring and thinking than writing that it has become meaningless to have a word count. I’m an obsessive re–drafter. I write, re–write, re–write and re–write. Draft after draft. And how would you count those words?

What’s your process for editing your work?

For me, editing is as important as writing. No, probably even more important. I’ve never been able to sit down and write the perfect sentence. I re–write constantly – it’s almost like being a carpenter sanding a piece of wood, again and again, until it’s perfectly smooth. My best and oldest friend is my first editor; she’s ruthless, clever and amazing. I don’t trust anyone like her. And if there are problems, my agent Patrick Walsh is my editing knight in a shining armour – he always comes to my rescue.

Are you consciously trying to emulate the style of another author or authors? Do you have people who you look to as models for your writing?

I don’t think so. At least not consciously. But I always read novels while I write – as a reminder of the importance of language. Just because I write non–fiction doesn’t mean that beautiful language should be excluded.

Do you consider writing to be easy? Would you say it comes to you naturally?

Haha, no, I’ve not been kissed by a muse. For me, writing is a craft that needs constant honing.

When did your aspirations to become a writer begin, and at what age did you start writing in hopes of living off of it/making a life out of it?

I always wanted to be either a writer or a painter – but luckily, I went for writing.

Which book would you say was your favorite to write?

It’s always the last one. So right now, it’s ‘The Invention of Nature’.

What are your favorite books on writing if you have any?

I have never read a book on writing – unless you count novels which can be perfect models for structure, language and plot.

You’re fluent in English and German. Does being bilingual help your writing process—perhaps when you’re searching for just the right word? Or does it have the opposite effect, making the writing process more complicated in some ways?

It’s been incredibly helpful for many reasons. It has made me think about language differently. Though German is my mother tongue, I write in English and I sometimes feel that I was born into the wrong language. English liberated me – German is incredibly precise but English is so much more descriptive. Learning English properly when I moved to Britain in my late twenties was like opening a treasure trove of words.

You trained as a design historian. How does your training affect your writing style?

It hasn’t really affected my writing (why would anyone aspire to an academic writing style?) but it really helped me to do research with obscure sources and in archives.

How do you come to find the stories and lives that become the subjects of your books?

Unlike many of my writer friends, I don’t have a drawer full of ideas. They occur very sparingly (too sparingly) and I’m always in a half panic that I’ll never have another idea after finishing a book. And right now, I’m in the midst of such a panic. How can I possibly find another person like Alexander von Humboldt – the most famous scientist of his age, yet forgotten today … brazenly adventurous, yet a genius thinker … a daring explorer, yet someone who was connected to every important person of his time … argghhh …. just writing this … and the panic is rising.

You wrote about Alexander von Humboldt, who had this very active life of discovery and adventure. He was also a scholar—but not in the way we usually think of scholars. Do you feel like writing about his life made your own life more adventurous? Did it affect the way you write at al?

Maybe not so much the way I write, but the way I researched ‘The Invention of Nature’. I followed Humboldt’s footsteps and travelled to some amazing places, from listening to howler monkeys in the rainforest at the Orinoco in Venezuela to standing above the clouds on 16,400 feet on Chimborazo.