Herman Kringlund

What was your favorite book as a child?

Growing up I read loads of comic books and manga books and I re-read our world atlas many times, but I never read “real books.” Then one day my teacher forced me to write a proper book review because I had cheated on the previous one. I told my dad I needed a short and easy book for this, and he gave me The Old Man and the Sea. It was the first time I read a “real book” voluntarily and I liked it so much I finished it in two evenings. It is still one of my favourite books today.

Do you remember the original reason or motivation why you started writing creatively?

I first wrote when I was 23 and it was a travel diary (that soon morphed into a book for so much more), but I’ve always liked to tell stories. In school my friends used to be like “No, no, let Herman tell what happened!” and I think this fondness for storytelling, not just executing a story but really wanting to tell a story, is a good reason I’m writing today. However, it was only when a great writer and good friend of mine sent me some of his short stories a couple years ago that I got inspired to write creatively myself.

What was the most adventurous or thrilling thing you ever did/experienced?

I’ve felt adventurous whenever I’ve caught unexpected rides in places unknown to me, like hitchhiking into Nagorno-Karabakh, looking at the stars from a bumpy flatbed in the Sahara or cruising into the Dominican sunset on the back of a moto. The most thrilling thing is to fall in love with someone slowly.

Do you listen to music while reading or writing?

Preferably not while reading, but I’ve had many great writing sessions to instrumental music. I used to have a room in Norway that had a writing desk with a fjord view, and on weekends I got a bottle of wine, my journal and a speaker and I listened to Ludovico Einaudi and wrote rants about the workweek. I could feel myself gripping the pencil harder, breaking lead tip after lead tip and writing more intensively skipping commas and dots as the symphony reached crescendo and then, as the music calmed, so did the writing. It would come out really good at times and since then I write to instrumental music on occasion, but only with pencil and paper.