Writing habits

A novel takes about nine months, which is split into four distinct periods:
a) Research

I approach each novel with only the vaguest idea what it will be about – sometimes just a single word like “underground” or “river”. For the next three or four months, I immerse myself in primary historical sources. Many of these (newspapers, scanned books etc) are accessible via the Net and I also buy vintage books from the 1840s if there are no digital versions. Over time, I fill a small notebook with my most interesting discoveries about buildings, practices, people and themes. This is the raw material of my eventual plot.

b) Plotting

So I begin with a collection of places, people and concepts: a puzzle that will be rearranged into a plot. Initially, I establish what will occur in the first, middle and last chapters (these being the basic backbone). Thereafter, it’s a case of building bridges between these three narrative vertebrae in such a way that pace, character and novelty are duly served. The aim is to have a rough overview of about thirty chapters before I begin writing. Without doubt, it is the most difficult part of the process and might take a month of daily pondering.

c) Writing

In this period of four-six months, I write for two hours each day between 8.00 and 10.00 in the evening. That usually means about a thousand words daily, and that seems to be my optimal word count. The most I have ever written in a day is 2300 words. It doesn’t sound much, but it works well for me and I often stop myself at 1000 words so I can spend the next twenty-four hours thinking about the next bit. That breathing space invariably gives me time to play with the plot in my mind and decide on the best approach.

I’m not one of those writers who needs to be in a remote cottage to concentrate. My first book was written mostly at home, but also on trains, at work and in hotels. In the early days, we had only one computer in the house and so my wife would talk to her friends on Skype as I wrote. My way of dealing with that kind of aural interference was to listen to heavy rock on noise-cancelling headphones while drinking whisky or cognac. Oddly, that combination seems to create a sublime calm and I still use it.

As for the practice of writing itself, I fluctuate between the euphoria of creation and the anguish of maintaining such a high level of willpower. Very often, I’ll dread turning the laptop on, only to turn it off two hours later in a state of bliss.

d) Editing

By far the easiest part of the whole process. I read through the whole novel again and make minor adjustments to the grammar and punctuation while correcting any typos I missed first time. Occasionally, I might switch the position of chapters to achieve a better balance or pace, but major cuts don’t occur. My publisher Macmillan might subsequently suggest further edits, but these have so far been very light and related predominantly to clarity.