M E E T    J O H N W R I T I N G    M A G A Z I N E by Judith Spelman, October-November 2003 It was a bit surreal, almost, if you like, a little supernatural. I was off to interview a freelance journalist who interviews writers himself. Sounds familiar? Well, that's where any similarity ends because John Connolly, who interviews authors for the Irish Times, is also a first class crime writer. His latest novel, Bad Men, is his fifth and darkest of all, with a threatening future hanging over the main characters right from the beginning. He is a writer influenced by the US authors Ed McBain, Ross McDonald and James Lee Burke, and although he does not live there, he sets his novels in America very successfully. 'If American crime fiction seemed the most suitable medium to explore the themes in which I was interested - compassion, morality, reparation, salvation - then America itself was the proper backdrop,' he said in a recent interview. What gives his books an edge is the way he introduces the supernatural, not too much but just enough to start the reader wondering... Was it difficult, I wondered, to reinvent himself, forgo journalism and become such a successful crime writer? 'I think a lot of people go into journalism because they enjoy writing and there are very few jobs that will pay you to write. Unfortunately, journalism is a very different thing from pure writing. There are people who are not good writers who are very, very good journalists. I realised after a while in journalism that I may not have been the best journalist. I could write features and newspaper articles but I really didn't enjoy it. My writing was more 'colour' writing and that was what I enjoyed doing. It seemed natural when I found that I wasn't being terribly fulfilled by what I was doing at the time, because when you're freelance you take any work that anyone will give you; you can't pick and choose. I guess the first novel was an escape. I hadn't written any fiction since I left school.' In that first novel, Every Dead Thing, he introduces Charlie Parker as his complex protagonist, who began as a selfish, violent man but evolves into someone who becomes compassionate towards people enmeshed in suffering through circumstances in which they are caught. He spent a long time working on Charlie Parker's character and it shows. How did he discover him? 'Charlie Parker discovered me! I knew in that first book, Every Dead Thing, it would begin with the man coming home and finding that his wife and child had been taken from him. That was the first thing I wrote. Once I had that idea in mind I could write a book. I always start with an idea. I have never planned a book. I don't know when I begin a book how it is going to end or what the middle section is going to be but there will always be an idea behind it. That was an idea about a man whose life had been destroyed and was now contributing to it, gradually awakening to a responsibility towards others and a recognition of his place in the world. And so he developed and he developed over time. 'I was fortunate and unfortunate at the same time; I was unfortunate in that it took me five years to get my book written and published and I was fortunate that it took me that long. The character developed over such a long time he had grown by the time I had finished it. When I began writing it I was only about 22 going on 23, but by the time it was published I was nearly 30. He had all that time to gestate and I had found the things that were wrong so I think he was a fuller character. There was a lot of me in him. I put a lot of myself into the books.' Although there is an element of the supernatural in the Charlie Parker books, Bad Men takes it further. 'I like to see how far I could take that mix of crime and the supernatural in Bad Men yet leave it more as a crime novel. I like the fact that the Americans call it mystery fiction. I like the resonance of that word. Mystery is to do with a revelation usually from God that cannot be understood by human reasoning. I love that aspect of mystery; the idea that something is left to our imagination, that there are some things that simply cannot be explained. But mysteries are odd things. What seems very mysterious at the beginning of a crime novel is usually explained in very simple terms by the end. They [mysteries] almost defeat themselves in one way. I was interested in seeing if it was possible to restore an element, to actually give readers a solution and yet give them only a partial solution and leave the rest up to them and to their imagination. That is one of the reasons the supernatural elements are there.' I asked him if being a journalist was a help or a hindrance. 'One of the worst pieces of advice writers are given is to write what you know,' he says. 'People tend to interpret it in a very narrow way. They figure that if you grew up in London, if you went to school in Tooting and you ended up working in Hackney, these are the only things you are able to write about. One of the things that I learned from journalism is that anything can be researched if you are prepared to put the time and effort in. You find the people who know about it.' Then surely, because he is a journalist, he has an advantage? 'It's not an advantage. You take it for granted that things can be researched whereas other people get a bit lost and maybe get a bit despondent before they start. With the books I write, I approach them in more or less the same way. I'm not a believer in doing research on the Internet or just by books. I have to go to the place; I have to take notes, I have to take photographs. And then I go and talk to people. I talk to people who know more than I do - and that applies to everything I do. I know there is no such thing as a stupid question and I am prepared to ask people the most basic things.' His first novel took him about five years to write. Like most people who write their first book, he was doing a full-time job at the time. 'I don't really trust people who say they are taking a year off to write a book,' he says. 'You are going to take a year off and you're going to watch Richard and Judy, you're going to catch some children's television and you're going to start going to bed early because there is nothing to fill your day. People work; they work and they try and write.' I know from experience that the disciplines of journalism and novel-writing are quite different. Connolly agrees that at the most basic level, a journalistic piece tends to be written in quite a short period of time. It tends to be no longer than about 1,000-2,000 words and it's very contained. Writing a book is quite a different prospect. How did he get over this change in direction? 'Maybe it's because I wasn't naturally a journalist,' he says, 'but I think it's really good advice to any writer to take it in small steps. I think what bothers people is that when you are used to writing 1,000-2,000 words, a novel feels like a never-ending road. It feels like you are never going to get it finished. But I have learned to cut my books into do-able chunks of about 1,000 or 2,000 words a day. 'I think that is why people sometimes get disheartened at about the 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 word stage. It suddenly seems like they have put so much work into writing the book and yet it is still nowhere near finished. At that point you have to keep progressing slowly. That was the only way I could do it. It wasn't a conscious decision; it just seemed the natural thing to do. 'The other thing that people do is as soon as they get their 2,000 words done, they go back over it. And they start tuning it and honing it. I don't think that works with a lot of people. What happens with many first-time writers is the mistake that happened with my first book. I spent about five months trying to get the prologue perfectly right and not getting any other work done. I was always thinking that I couldn't progress until that first section was perfect. Now I have learned that what I have to do is leave it. I never go back over it until I have finished the draft. Then I start again and go through it and I go back again and again until it's right. But there are some writers who write a section in the morning and in the evening edit it and never go back over it again.' He manages to balance the journalism he still does with writing books. 'Journalism took up an awful lot of my time. The books are the most important thing for me now although I still get pleasure out of beginning something on a Saturday, finishing it by Monday or Tuesday and seeing it in the paper the following Saturday. I tend not to do more than one or two pieces a month and I tend to only interview writers I am really curious about because I feel I don't bring anything to it otherwise.' His books start with an idea but after that, what happens? Many authors will spend a long period developing that idea in their minds or writing a framework that contains the essence of the book. What does Connolly do after he has accepted he can work with his 'idea'? 'Very little. You construct the book as you write it. That's what defeats people. They feel they have to get everything straight in their heads before they sit down. I know there are writers who need to sit down and plan every chapter. I would be very bored if I did that. What interests me is seeing how the book develops. It's hard for a first time novelist because you don't know if you can write a book. I have written five books now and I pretty much know that all these worries I have at the beginning of a book are natural and I can get over them. But when you are a first time writer you don't have that reassurance.' Does he go through a period of self doubt? 'At about 40,000 words,' he says. 'It's a wall. Your instinct is to go away and do something else. In reality what you need to do is get through it by plugging away at it in tiny little increments. Every book I write I think I have made a mistake. I think, this is a terrible idea for a book, it's a lousy idea. Who is going to want to read it? Never mind who is going to want to read it, I can't write it! I am always grateful that people like my books. In theory you can actually start a book and realise you can't finish it. And there is no way of knowing that at the beginning. It's kind of exciting. 'I set myself a target everyday. Initially, in the early stages, that is just a couple of thousand words. Sometimes that may go down to just 1,000 or 500 if I'm in a difficult part of it. A book is not just written at the computer keyboard or at a desk. A book is written, I find, when I'm driving, or in the cinema watching a bad movie, or when somebody says something that sparks off a train of thought. You need to be open to all of that. It was hard, when I was writing the first book and I was working at the same time, to find the space in life to allow the time to do that. And yet, that is when my books are written. By the time I sit down the following morning I have some idea of where I have to take the next stage of the book.' He has two tips to give new writers. 'You must write every day,' he says. 'Even if it is only 50 words a day. People get focused on length, whether they are writing a novel or a short story. They think it has to be a certain length. It doesn't have to be any length because it's going to be written in tiny increments so you need the discipline of writing every day. Even if you have to get up half an hour before your kids and write 100 or 200 words at the breakfast table, at the end of the week that's going to be 1,400 words. Writing is a discipline and a craft. 'The other tip is to persevere. You are going to get rejected, you are going to get hurt, and you are going to think you have put your life and soul into something that is handed back to you in an envelope covered with coffee stains. You have to be prepared for this before you begin because it is the reality of what is going to happen. But if you have written something worthwhile, at some point somebody will read it and like it. That is what has to keep you going.' (Thanks to Jayne for typing this up!)