Posted 09 May 2005 - 03:44 AM
To answer your questions, I'm going to cheat a bit now and give you my reply to an interview I did for Writing Magazine some time ago. Hope it gives you some flavour of a Day in the Life of a Professional Scribbler.
I clamber out of bed around 7.30, a little earlier in summer, and a little later in winter, especially if I can hear rain lashing at the window. The dogs get let out into the yard, and I walk out the front of the house to take a look at the sea and sniff the air. Breakfast is usually a cup of tea or drink of water – I’m not good with food first thing. I’ll take the dogs out soon after I’ve dressed, and both they and I get to stroll, amble, jog and otherwise progress two or three miles up and down the beach. If it’s a spring tide and the water is out far enough we may wade the quarter-mile out to the island, and the mutts will chase rabbits like things possessed. It’s then that I mull over the current story in my head, generating dialogue, looking at the sea and sometimes seeing something in it that I can use in the book. When writing naval fiction, it helps immeasurably to be able to watch the ocean in all its moods. It’s never the same two days running.
I live with my wife in a small fishing village on the south Down coast. It’s miles from anywhere, and for nine months of the year is almost deserted. The beach swarms with tourists in summer, but outside that season it’s possible to go an entire day without seeing a car drive past. The house is a renovated version of a cottage my wife’s great-grandfather built over a century ago. On stormy days the waves can reach the windows; the place is literally thirty feet from the water.
I’ve written thirteen books, nine under my own name and four under a pseudonym. I just finished The Mark of Ran for Bantam, and it was published last month. At present I’m wrestling with the plot of a sequel, as yet untitled. Of late, I’ve found that I make at least two false starts when writing novels, and usually end up trashing the first ten thousand words. I’m like a man feeling his way through a darkened room. I always get there in the end though.
Ninety-five percent of what I write goes directly through the keyboard of a computer. Only in the beginning, when I’m feeling my way into the story, do I write anything longhand. I type faster than I write, so longhand can’t seem to keep up with the ideas most of the time. Occasionally though, I’ll feel the need to sit somewhere else, look at something else aside from the monitor, and I’ll scrawl ideas into a notebook.
By mid-morning of a good day, I’m fifteen hundred words further into the story. I’ll stop then, make strong coffee and toast, and light my pipe. The key is not to start thinking about anything else except the story – once you leave that world, it’s hard to get back in again. I’ll write e-mails, stick on Radio Four, re-read old bits of text. But eventually I’ll have to take up the nuts and bolts where I left off.
Progress varies. The most I’ve ever written in one day was five and a half thousand words, but that was exceptional. Usually I’m happy with two thousand. And if I haven’t started by nine-thirty at the latest, somehow the whole day seems harder, and the writing goes much slower – all in my mind, I’m sure. I usually finish by mid-afternoon, go over the text for glaring errors, and save everything to a floppy – twice, I’ve lost substantial chunks of books in the past because I was too indolent to save my work every day. If I have a deadline looming, I’ll work on into the evening. A couple of years ago I worked twenty-three days straight, including Christmas Day. My own fault of course – with this job you are your own boss, and it’s very easy to procrastinate.
The computer gets switched off, and the dogs prick up their ears – they know the routine. It’s the beach again, or perhaps over the rocks to the south. Occasionally a cycle ride, if the weather’s good. I’ll start thinking about dinner, and what I’m going to make for my wife when she gets home from work.
I’ve been to the odd convention – mostly when I was starting out. They’re enjoyable, but exhausting. For me, writing is very much a solitary thing, and though I enjoy the chance to sit down and hash over the mechanics of it with other people now and again, I often feel something of a fraud. I don’t keep up with the current ‘scene’, and don’t read much of my own genre. Writing is, I believe, a very odd way to make a living, and sometimes I’m astonished by how seriously people take it. My brother is a policeman, and the decisions he makes day to day are ultimately far more important.
I write fantasy books, but I like to think that I try to make them as ‘realistic’ as possible. Throw in as many dragons and magic swords as you like, but if, ultimately, your characters are not pushed into making real, human decisions, then your story is hollow at its heart.
paulkearneyonline.net
Writing Place
I’m lucky enough to have an office of my own in the house. It’s lined with books, has a battered desk and a comfortable chair (which is vital since you spend so much time with your ass parked in it.) There’s one big window, and it looks out onto the sea some ten to fifteen yards away, and the Island a quarter of a mile beyond that. I can look out and watch the gales come blowing in off the Irish Sea in winter. On an average day I’ll see seals, cormorants, gannets and oyster-catchers. I keep binoculars beside the keyboard in case something particularly interesting turns up. The sea is never the same two days running. When inspiration fails, I find myself staring at it, and usually, it gives me something back.
Help
Also, is there any historical figure (napoleon?) you had in mind when writing him?
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