MY WORKING DAYInspiration? The answer to that most-asked ...
MY WORKING DAY
Inspiration? The answer to that most-asked question is more like perspiration, constantly fighting time with six months to write one historical crime a year, excluding the research involved, meanwhile no coffee mornings for the novel’s duration, and my friends know the rules. A computer at 9 am is not my best hour but I have learned the trick of leaving a sentence uncompleted or characters with a cliff hanger. The creative juices, alas, have a limited period - what RL Stevenson (my inspiration!) called ‘the orange is squeezed dry’. By 1 pm returning to face 21st century domestic chores but never quite escaping ‘and what happens next?’ I write crime having always loved puzzles, addicted to sodoku, crosswords, jigsaws, anything to keep the little grey cells ticking over and on my daily walk in southside Edinburgh, setting of so many invented homicides, I have dialogue with my characters much to wry glances from passersby.
Although a certain glamour surrounds being a novelist, I tell fans who regard my list of books with awe that for me, it is just a job like their own. Writing is what I have always done, long before my first novel was published nearly fifty years ago and having a series, Inspector Faro and Rose McQuinn have become real people (also to my readers). In moments of exasperation I’ll say: ‘This is your story, you tell me what you did next.‘ But writing ‘The End’ feels like closing the door on much loved friends, wondering when we will meet again - if ever. Then waiting until the seed of the next plot, lurking somewhere beyond the horizon, springs into life. I don’t pursue it, I wait patiently until it is strong enough to have dialogue, arguments and resolutions.
One day, it’s there! And off I go again. Next book, please.
Inspiration? The answer to that most-asked question is more like perspiration, constantly fighting time with six months to write one historical crime a year, excluding the research involved, meanwhile no coffee mornings for the novel’s duration, and my friends know the rules. A computer at 9 am is not my best hour but I have learned the trick of leaving a sentence uncompleted or characters with a cliff hanger. The creative juices, alas, have a limited period - what RL Stevenson (my inspiration!) called ‘the orange is squeezed dry’. By 1 pm returning to face 21st century domestic chores but never quite escaping ‘and what happens next?’ I write crime having always loved puzzles, addicted to sodoku, crosswords, jigsaws, anything to keep the little grey cells ticking over and on my daily walk in southside Edinburgh, setting of so many invented homicides, I have dialogue with my characters much to wry glances from passersby.
Although a certain glamour surrounds being a novelist, I tell fans who regard my list of books with awe that for me, it is just a job like their own. Writing is what I have always done, long before my first novel was published nearly fifty years ago and having a series, Inspector Faro and Rose McQuinn have become real people (also to my readers). In moments of exasperation I’ll say: ‘This is your story, you tell me what you did next.‘ But writing ‘The End’ feels like closing the door on much loved friends, wondering when we will meet again - if ever. Then waiting until the seed of the next plot, lurking somewhere beyond the horizon, springs into life. I don’t pursue it, I wait patiently until it is strong enough to have dialogue, arguments and resolutions.
One day, it’s there! And off I go again. Next book, please.
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ALANNA’S BLOG
Hello this is my blog where I will record some of the interesting things that make up my life as a writer. I started off as a historical novelist in 1968 and I have written more than 70 books, includi
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