Note: As is now customary to earn an interview with Frumpenella Spoon, I gladly accepted the condition of anonymity as an interviewer to protect her privacy. I confess, I found the experience of writing in secret rather exhilarating. It is not every day you can pretend to be a spy.
Step into the library at the bottom of Frumpenella Spoon’s garden and you’ll find an odd blend of eras colliding: floor-to-ceiling books, stacks of vinyl and cassettes, a CD player humming in the corner, and—perched imperiously on a pile of draft pages—an orange cat who answers to no one but perhaps Frumpy herself.
Spoon is the kind of writer whose quirks become part of her prose. She gesticulates wildly while he writes, as if conducting the sentences into existence. Her love of tea borders on religious devotion. her reading habits are as omnivorous as her stories: philosophy cheek-by-jowl with pulp adventure, literary experiments tucked alongside battered detective paperbacks.
When I visited, the kettle was on, the cat was watching, and Frumpy was in high spirits. What follows is a conversation about her eccentric process, why music must come from a physical format, and how she built a world in a library at the edge of her garden.
Q&A with Frumpenella Spoon
Q: Your library at the bottom of the garden feels like a character in its own right. Was that intentional?
Spoon: Entirely. I’ve always believed the room you write in should conspire with you. This library is not just storage—it’s an accomplice. The cat agrees, though she conspires mostly in the form of sabotage. She likes to knock pens under the radiator.
Q: Tell me about your orange cat—she seems to play a starring role in your writing routine.
Spoon: She is both muse and tyrant. She arrives, plonks herself down, and suddenly I’m writing about cats, whether I meant to or not. She’s the only editor I can’t fire.
Q: You gesticulate while you write, which is unusual for a solitary act. Why?
Spoon: Writing is not solitary at all! It’s theater. I’m on stage, performing the story to an audience of—well, myself, and sometimes the cat. My hands conduct the rhythm of the sentences. If a paragraph doesn’t sound right when I wave my arms about, it won’t read right either.
Q: You’ve resisted Spotify, Apple Music, all of it. Why cling to cassettes and vinyl?
Spoon: Because objects have soul. A cassette rewinds with a sigh, a vinyl crackles like an old man clearing his throat. Those imperfections become part of the writing atmosphere. You can’t summon that with a digital shuffle. Also, the cat loves batting the cassette cases across the floor. That’s her percussion section.
Q: Tea seems central to your practice. Is it ritual or necessity?
Spoon: Both. Tea is liquid punctuation. It divides chapters, bridges paragraphs, soothes crises of confidence. I like the quiet theater of making it: boiling, steeping, pouring. The act forces me to pause, which is often when the best ideas sneak in.
Q: What are you reading right now?
Spoon: A biography of a mountaineer, a book of poems about mushrooms, and a detective novel where the butler absolutely did it. I like to keep my reading diet chaotic—otherwise my writing becomes too well-behaved.
Q: Lastly, what advice would you give to writers who struggle with routine?
Spoon: Don’t aim for routine—aim for ritual. A routine is brushing your teeth. A ritual is lighting a candle and summoning the gods of narrative. Even if your ritual is ridiculous—waving your hands, playing a cassette, bribing a cat with biscuits—it matters because it tells your brain: we are entering the story now.