Authors Electric

Until recently I thought I was the laziest writer alive. I know I'm not really, because there's a bookshelf lined with books to prove otherwise, but when I'm idling at my desk - or doing something else altogether to avoid facing the screen - I feel  incredibly lazy. There are writers who turn out three thousand words a day, or write tirelessly for hours on end. I just can't do that. Sometimes, especially at the start of a project, I have to cajole, bully and threaten myself in order to get anything done at all. Fortunately it's not always like that, or why would I do it? A book usually takes off for me when I'm about a third of the way in. And I love revising. When I was revising THE DAMAGE DONE for its Kindle edition, I found myself working at all hours, reluctant to stop. Revising is so much easier than first-stage writing. It's come as a surprise, this last month, to find that writing non-fiction feels so very different. I'm co-writing a commiss...

It may seem odd to do your research some while after finishing the book - in this case, five years after publication. But everything is useful to a writer, and I’m sure that somehow or other I’ll make use of the stone-carving I did last summer. It’s not that I did no research at all for SET IN STONE. I talked to stone-carvers, handled stone, studied the work of Eric Gill, learned about Jurassic limestone. But last May several things fell into place and I found myself chip-chip-chipping away. Shortly after SET IN STONE was published, I met a local stonecarver, Bernard Johnson, who was exhibiting during Artweeks in Oxford. I loved his work, and could see at once that he was influenced by Eric Gill. I’d decided that if my publisher gave me a commission to write LOB, I would find a stone-carver to make me a Green Man for my garden, and was hoping to find someone suitable; as soon as I saw Bernard’s work, the search was over. He made me a calm and wise Green Man, in Portland stone, whi...

I wonder how other authors feel when their books are finished? For me, each time a book is submitted to the publisher after the final revisions, I have a sense of parting with it, knowing that I’ll never again “live” in that book as I did while writing it. Reading the published book isn’t the same at all; in fact, if I do so at all, it's with trepidation, fearing the discovery of some toe-curling mistake, or at the very least something I want to change. Preparing The Damage Done for its e-edition gave me the rare chance to live in a book again, and one of my favourites. I revised it for things that have become outdated (Kirsty listening to her Walkman; people smoking in a pub or waiting for dial-up internet connections) but also made numerous small tweaks, taking a word out here, adding a few there, all so surreptitious that probably no one but me will ever notice. Doing this, I experienced the enjoyment of writing all over again. Especially, I had fun with Kirsty’s father, G...