Nell Leyshon is an award-winning novelist and playwright. Amongst other plaudits her play Comfort Me With Apples won the 2005 Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright. Nell has been commissioned by some of the top theatres in the country, including the Sheffield Lyceum, the Lyric Hammersmith, Hampstead Theatre, The National and The Royal Court. Her work has also toured internationally and she is one of the co-founders of Salt Factory. One of her most recent plays, Bedlam, is the first play by a female playwright ever to be performed at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

She writes extensively for Radio 3 and 4 and in 2003 won the Richard Imison Memorial Award. Nell’s prose is published by Picador. She lives in Dorset.

LR (aka Lorna Rees, Theatre Producer for Activate): First question - sorry for going for the obvious - but why do you write?

NL: I write because it is the most suitable way to express myself creatively. In fact the process of writing helps me to discover what it is I really think. And now I have been writing for a while, I find I have to write. If I can not write because I'm busy working on other things, I become really agitated and bad tempered. Also I find I have to write in order to complete deadlines. I enjoy that. 

LR: Writing is your job though – as well as your form of creative expression. This far on in your successful writing career are you still writing to simply express yourself and hope others find it interesting or entertaining? Or do you find you are thinking about your audience’s experience or the theatre you are under commission for’s needs as you commit words to a page? Is being creatively totally free as useful being given some parameters? I’m interested as you say you like writing to deadlines….

NL: Okay...

I have different projects: some are to commission and you have to write to order, for that specific target audience and possibly venue (for example my recent series on Radio 4's Woman's Hour). I have other projects which are not commissioned where I can write from a freer creative position. However the pressure of deadlines can be extremely useful to complete work and can build up pressure which makes me work harder and write more! I find complete freedom can be confusing and if I ponder too much, a project may never be actually written. The challenge of having to respond to parameters and deadlines is daunting but exciting. It's knowing the enemy. 

LR: Are you a writer who meticulously researches their work or do you think yourself into a place and write what you think is the truth of that situation? Does it all just depend on the subject matter?

NL: It depends on the task. Some pieces need to be more planned and researched, although however much I plan something, it does always change as I write it. It needs to be fully known before I start to write - by that I mean that I have a grasp of the shape of the whole thing. 

Too much research too early on can be daunting and dry and the piece of writing tends to come over as research heavy and not fully alive. So research can be good to do as the questions arise.  

Whatever grand things most writers say about planning and research, so much of writing is a question of muddling through and keeping at the rewrites until the work becomes clear. 

LR: I’m very interested in your work with Vita Nova (http://www.vitanova.co.uk), would you be able to tell me a bit more about your relationship with the company?

NL: I've been working with Vita Nova for seven years now. It started with a ten week course in creative writing and I have somehow never left. I've been their official writer in residence for the last eighteen months and we are applying to extend the writing programme. 

I am completely passionate about the work we have done together, and this year we are publishing an anthology of their writing. The quality is overwhelmingly good, and I really believe that we will be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of using writing to change the lives of marginalised individuals. 

We are starting to perform at Literary Festival and events, and their spoken word poetry can be seen at Freeway Poets at the Winchester Pub, and at the occasional Scratch Nights held at Vita Nova. 

LR: It would be easy to ask you which medium you most enjoy writing for, but I really want to know what makes you want to write for the stage specifically?’.

NL: Writing for the stage is very different from other forms. I love the fact that I have to use a similar skill to an architect and create a two dimensional piece of work which can be put on its feet. It challenges your brain in a different way. Also language can be used in a heightened way which is very exciting to write. Time is compressed and experience is also heightened. It's exciting and challenging and always frightening.

LR: Finally, I wanted to ask about how you found writing the piece for the National Connections last year and if you saw it performed at all… if you have any time I’d love to include and answer in there (Lyme Youth Theatre performed it and loved the piece)!

NL: The Beauty Manifesto was written for National Theatre's Connections programme. I wanted to get young people to think about the pressures on their notions of body image and where those have come from. They are not natural, but part of our advanced capitalist system. I wanted to write a play which could affect the young performers' views. I saw one production of it in Plymouth, where the play was first developed with a group of young people. It will be performed on the Olivier stage at the National on the 4th July [2011], by Junk Shop Theatre.

LR: Thank you masses for taking the time to answer my questions. I’d absolutely recommend anyone going to the next Vita Nova scratch night – check their website to see when the next one is http://www.vitanova.co.uk/

For more information on Nell and her work visit her biog on the British Council Website: www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth56B212BE1b77e18A5FqrVQ6B22BB