Describe the place where you write/draw.

I write in a room piled with papers, most of which are not my own, to the sound of telephones ringing with automated messages wanting to tell me how important it is that I sue somebody about Payment Protection Insurance. I write on a coach, with my laptop on my knees, while the commuter traffic crawls along stop-start-stop-start and the rain makes everybody sigh. I write on the squidgy surfaces of my own brain, lying awake at three in the morning or washing up after supper and half a bottle of wine (this last works really well, until you have to put actual words to what you were thinking and suddenly you can’t remember half of it).

What is your most treasured possession?

That has to be my sanity. I keep putting it somewhere and having to find it again. I’m so pleased when I do.

What times of the day do you work?

Mornings, when not shirking. If I’m writing at other times it’s not work it’s fun, and it’s probably happening because I’m shirking something else.

What distracts you?

Nothing distracts me. I have a mind like a coiled spring, will-power like tempered steel. I am focus, concentration, intensity. I am like a spider, patiently spinning a web. I am like a panther, poised to spring. I am… OOOH! MUFFINS!!

What is your favourite smell?

Muffins. Read the rest of this entry »

A man rides out of the muddy forests of Germany. Before him is a house, the country retreat of a gentle-born family where mother and daughter sit in the decorous idleness of a dying empire.

Our hero dismounts below the blank windows. He strides purposefully up the steps and hammers at the door. It opens, revealing a surprised and self-important little servant. And…

…Is the hero expected to produce a card?

This is the eighteenth century. Jane Austen and all that. We know that calling cards were part of the ritual in Jane Austen’s Bath. But this is not Bath. We’re not in any spa town, or any town of any kind. We’re on the ancestral estate, which consists of about three peasants and a pig. Callers are rare. Well, we think they are. Suddenly we’re not too sure about that either. Anyway, there’s a war on.

Research? By all means try, if you think that you’re going to find anything that will help. Googling ‘eighteenth-century calling card’ will probably tell you something about Bath and Jane Austen, but it won’t help your mud-bespattered young hussaur in the Franconian forest. At least, not in English it won’t. What’s the German? Achtzehnjahundertebesuchskarte? Maybe, but will you understand the answer even if you find one? No? So why did we start writing this novel in the first place?

And that’s the point. In just seconds you’ve gone from doubting one small detail to doubting your right to produce this novel at all. Doubt is fatal. If you write in doubt, readers will sense your disbelief. They won’t believe your world either. You can have all the research in the world in there, but if you’ve put it in because you were afraid of getting something wrong, it will not convince.

This is why most writers say they don’t do research, or don’t do it until afterwards anyway. The story is what matters – the momentum with which it unfolds. Leap those steps two at a time, with your spurs jingling spitefully at your heels. Snarl at the pompous little servant who tries to block your way. [Square brackets around the card, if you must – we’ll think about that later.] Now stalk down the unlit corridor to where the heroine and her mother wait. And there say to them the things that will change their world.

That’s how you tell a story.

 John Dickinson worked for 17 years in Whitehall and Brussels before becoming an author. He has published five novels: The Cup of the World, The Widow and the King, The Fatal Child, The Lightstep and WE.

I could not possibly disagree with either Linda or Melanie.

Well, yes I could. On one little little point. Linda’s title for her post “Thieving Magpies” was no doubt intended to be provocative. I am duly provoked :)

‘Theft’ implies property. The thing that is stolen belongs to someone else. But to whom does a work like Jane Eyre belong? Or The Turn of the Screw or The Silver Chair? Of course the law may allow heirs and corporations to own rights over past works. But that seems a bit like allowing the descendant of some Victorian collector to own treasures that his ancestor looted from the tombs of the Pharoahs.

The big, old, much-loved stories belong to everyone. They get retold and retold, in many forms. Not a year goes by without another Jane Austen TV serialisation or film re-make. Now, it would be a brave writer who actually tried to re-write Pride and Predjudice, but shift it to another century, put it in different clothes, call it Bridget Jones’ Diary and it works. Who’s the poorer? Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, I have Archie moments.  I have so many that when I look back they all blur into a miasma of misunderstanding and confusion.  Only the really grisly ones stand out clearly, complete in themselves.  You know - the ones that make you scream when you remember them.  (And then of course everyone in the room turns round and looks at you: another Archie moment.  They breed, you see.)   

It was my first ever publisher’s party.  My debut novel was due out the following month.  I went up and down the crowded room, proudly wearing my badge John Dickinson – Author and introducing myself to everyone: ‘How do you do? I’m John Dickinson‘ just in case they couldn’t read. Everyone was very nice. They are, at publisher’s parties.

‘How do you do?’ I said to the next person. I squinted at their badge. This too said Author. ‘What do you write?’

The author laughed dismissively. Not much really, was the answer. Bits and pieces. Non-fiction, mostly.

Read the rest of this entry »