Getting Down To Work
The Writer’s Working Day:
Some time back I asked some fellow crime writers how they started their working day.
John Harvey is too prolific a writer – books, scripts, short stories – to waste time before getting down to it. He’s up at six, has coffee by six-fifteen, and is at his desk before six thirty. (He grinned and called himself a smug bastard when he told me that.) Six days a week, he said, rubbing it in – and in extremis, seven. Writing is a job, so get on with it.
Amen to that, said Ed Gorman. ‘Newspaper work and advertising copywriting teach you to be efficient with your time. I read the news on the net each morning and then get right to work.’ This is the characteristic Protestant work ethic of an ex journalist – or a Victorian, of whom one of the most often cited is Anthony Trollope. Up at five, produce three thousand words of finished prose, pause for breakfast, go out to work. ‘Of late I have become a little lenient to myself – to write with my watch before me, and to require from myself two hundred and fifty words every quarter of an hour.’ Those Victorians, eh!
Worryingly for many writers, these three, Trollope, Harvey and Gorman, are early starters all, and not only are they prolific they are fine writers too, so don’t let anyone kid you that getting on with it means writing like a hack. Far from it. John Creasey considered it a poor year when he turned out only four books – but let’s face it, he was a hack. On the other hand I’ve known writers who can spend all day creating and polishing a tiny store of gilded, perfumed words – every sentence of which is drivel.
So, back to how writers organise their working day. You have to be especially disciplined if there are two writers in the house: that gives you twice as many reasons for delay. Judith Cutler and Keith Miles (aka Edward Marston) live together and, before saying Goodbye to each other and Hello to the desk, they like to get in an early game of tennis or half a round of golf. They may even take a walk. Despite which they’re at work by 9.30. This may not compare to John Harvey or Ed Gorman – though it compares well enough to many a conventional office worker – but Judith says she often gets more work done if she doesn’t have the whole day available in which to do it. Perhaps, she says, she feels some sort of guilt because she went out shopping, or mowed the lawn or went out for lunch, and her guilt (that old motivator) stimulates the creative juices.
Now, as Dylan Thomas said, To begin at the beginning:
Plunge Straight In, or Gaze at the Pool?
Should a writer straight down to work or ease into the day? John Harvey, Ed Gorman and the Marston/Cutler duo are early starters – but is that essential for success? Ian Rankin doesn’t think so: ‘I have plenty of time-wasting strategies,’ he says. ‘The house is never tidier than when I’m starting a book. I’ll stop to check for non-existent emails. I’ll rearrange my CD collection. More than this though, if a day isn’t going well – if the scenes aren’t flowing within the first hour or so – then I’ll call a halt and do something else instead. No point being a writer if you can’t decide your own hours. I’m not a slave to a certain length of working day, never have been.’
Similarly, Natasha Cooper freely admits to procrastination. ‘I have lots of time-wasting strategies,’ she said airily. ‘Or so I’d thought until I read an authoritative article somewhere that said most people have their most creative thoughts when horizontal – which makes my long morning baths and post-lunch snoozes part of the creative process, rather than time-wasting.’ She seemed to be serious – you can’t always tell with Natasha – but I was reminded of Leslie Glaister who writes great chunks of her books lying in bed, propped up on cushions, a writing tray against her knees, and … hey, that’s the life, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to be a writer? Leslie insists that, just as so many of us get, or think we get, our most creative thoughts in bed, so does she. She can lie in a half dreamlike state, no distractions, nothing between her and the words: a simple conduit – brain, pencil, pad. And note the pad, the writing pad – nothing electronic and nothing, therefore, connected. Nothing to distract her, other than going back to sleep.
Next week, more start-up strategies, from Andrew Taylor and Mike Jecks.
