We went to hear novelist Pat Barker speak on Thursday. She was in fine conversation with Sharon Monteith at Nottingham Playhouse in a benefit for Nottingham Unesco City of Literature funds to support literature/literacy initiatives across the city. She read from new work in progress, inspired by Homer’s Iliad, that brought alive the previously silent voices of two young women. In a wide ranging discussion afterwards, with some excellent questions from the audience, she talked about her writing processes. She urged the writers in the audience to go into the writing ‘wanting to surprise yourself’ because if you can’t do that then no-one else will be surprised by what you write. I love the element of risk implied in this approach: you are going out into the unknown in your writing, exploring, as Captain Kirk would say,’strange new worlds… new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no (one)…