This week, we concluded filming on the documentary. It's been a pleasure, I have to say. I was probably more than a little cautious at the beginning, but the crew and the producer couldn't have been kinder - or better company - and, in the end, I appreciated the opportunity to explain myself and what I've been doing for the past ten years or so. In addition, Maine came up trumps, and everyone and everything (including the weather) smiled upon us, including the various law enforcement agencies, and the people who agreed to let us film in their bars and restaurants and houses.
Still, when I returned to Maine from Washington yesterday I was grateful to be able to resume writing. I was intent upon finishing THE GATES, the odd little book upon which I've been working since last year (and about which, in truth, I've been thinking since the second or third book), and so I sat down this morning and didn't move from my desk until the draft was done. By the time I sat back in my chair, the light had changed and I had almost 4000 words written. I still don't know if anyone will want to publish it, but I've enjoyed every minute of working on it, and it has made me smile.
As a reward, I went to see GRAN TORINO, the new Clint Eastwood movie, and, once I'd managed to get over what felt like Clint's early mugging for the cameras, I enjoyed it a lot. Nevertheless, even in the midst of the action I found myself thinking about the next book. It's something that I discussed with the documentary crew: how, at various points in a book, it becomes impossible to concentrate properly on anything other than the novel in hand.
For months, I've been trying to figure out how to start the next Charlie Parker book. I think I know what the catalyst will be, but I've been struggling to find my way into it. As I sat watching GRAN TORINO, I realised out how the novel should begin. Actually, I was working it out as I walked down to the movie theatre in Portland, but it came together as I sat in the dark, watching Clint utter racial epithets about his new Asian neighbours. What I was watching had no connection with what I intended to write, but there was something about sitting in the darkness, watching the film unfold while my mind sought to accommodate what it had been considering earlier with what it was now confronting, that brought everything together, and I knew how the next book should begin.
Actually, I've been a bit distracted of late, and not just because of the documentary. THE REAPERS came out in paperback in the UK recently. This was its first full week on sale, and I wanted it to do well. I was worried that it wouldn't make the top 10 list, mainly I was trying to finish one book and start another, and my confidence was in need of a boost. I probably made life very difficult for my beloved agent as a result, but I think he understood that it wasn't simply a matter of sales but of giving me the impetus that I needed to keep going at a moment of transition between two very different projects. Thankfully, the book seems to be doing okay, and I can almost feel some of the tension easing from my body. After all, if it hadn't been doing well, then what business did I have working on something that might never appear in print? Shouldn't I have been trying to get my career back on track? And what would be the point, if the mysteries weren't being read? The same thing happens twice every year: the first time when the last paperback appears, and the second time when the new novel is published in hardback. Perhaps, after a decade of publishing, such matters shouldn't concern me, but they do. I want my books to do well so that I can keep writing them and, in truth, so I can buy a little leverage to pursue odd experiments like NOCTURNES, THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS, and THE GATES.
Something did put a smile on my face yesterday, though. I was browsing in the wonderful Bullmoose music store in Portland, and saw a CD by a band named The Loups. Hmmm, I thought, that's a good name for a band, perhaps because it reminded me of the villainous wolf hybrids in THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS.
Then I saw that the band's EP was called Holding Hands with the Crooked Man, and wondered if it might possibly have anything to do with my book. Via MySpace, I sent a polite email to the band, asking just that question, and got a very lovely email back from the band's lead singer enthusing about my work. It was just a nice piece of snyergy, and now I'm the proud possessor of the EP, the first inspired, however peripherally, by something that I wrote. Even better, The Loups are a local Portland band so, with luck, I'll get to see them live before I head back to Dublin.
Now, I must finish re-reading HAWKSMOOR for the book club.
Tomorrow, I begin the new book. I think it will be called THE WHISPERERS...
This week John read
Twelve by Jasper Kent
School Days by Robert B Parker
and listened to
Temple of Low Men by Crowded House
Blood Bank by Bon Iver
The Beatles by The Beatles
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
BUSY DOING NOTHING . . . ISH
I have been very remiss about this blog lately, even by my fairly lax standards. There are good reasons, though (he says, vainly flicking through a large book marked ‘Excuses’).
To begin with, I’ve been filming a documentary entitled THE HONEYCOMB WORLD, which was commissioned by RTE, the Irish national broadcaster, and will be broadcast early next year. Well, I say filming, but I largely sit around talking about myself while other people film me, so I’m not sure if I qualify for the verb ‘filming’. Next week it all gets a bit busier, though, as the crew and I head over to Maine to do a week there. Cue pictures of me looking thoughtful, or perhaps just trying to remember what my feet feel like, as it’s rather chilly in Maine at the moment.
At the same time, having finished the fairly minor edits for THE LOVERS, I’ve returned to an odd book that I’ve been humming and hawing over for quite some time. Basically, I set aside three months to get it finished, with the intention of having it done by the end of February. It may never see the light of day but, if it does, it’s likely to appear between THE LOVERS and the next Parker novel, which is due in the middle of 2010.
That urge to experiment, to try new things that may fail, is one that’s becoming increasingly difficult to indulge as time goes on. The will is there, but the time simply is not. By taking a few months to work on this book, I’ve set back the next Parker book by a similar amount of time, and I expect that I will be looking for a certain degree of indulgence from my editors when it comes to delivery dates later this year.
Nevertheless, it was important to me to work on this project. There was no way that I could start work on the next Parker book immediately after finishing the last one. I just didn’t want to, and I was finding it impossible to keep ideas for it straight in my head. At the same time, I didn’t want to not write. Time is too valuable, and there are all sorts of ideas that I’d dearly love to pursue. I’d feel guilty just sitting around, waiting for some set date to approach on which I’d promised myself I’d return to Parker, so instead it seemed appropriate to start something else.
The first result of this is that I have a clear head of sorts, and I’m about ready to start on the next mystery novel. The second result, and the bad news, is that I’ve had a near constant headache for three months, mainly because the focus on this other book has been so intense that it’s taken a bit of a toll, I think. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve enjoyed doing it, and even if it never appears in print the pleasure of it has been enough, but I seem always to be aware of a ticking clock somewhere in the background; or rather, a series of ticking clocks, each set to a different time, as the various demands and requests pile up.
There are invitations to festivals, some of them so far in the future that I’ll be able to travel to them by teleportation, or in a rocket ship, but I have to make a decision on my attendance NOW!; there are publishers looking for publicity tours, sometimes in different countries at the same time, so that along with teleportation I’m starting to take an avid interest in cloning; I promised to write an introduction for a book of short stories, and then found that the subject matter required something close to a thesis, which made my head hurt more; three requests for contributions to short story collections have come in already this year, even though I don’t really write many short stories, and anyway I’m already semi-committed to delivering a story to a collection by March, even if I haven’t written it yet; I’ve promised to write an essay for a book on Irish crime fiction, and I haven’t written that yet either; someone sends me an interview to be done by e-mail, with over 50 questions (e-mail interviews are one of the reasons that I curse the Internet, because essentially, if I agree to do one, I end up writing it myself; as a journalist, I tend to avoid them like a plague, as they’re an unfair imposition on the person being interviewed), yet he’s a nice guy, and I know I’ll end up doing up, but 50 questions is a lot; I have three books on quantum physics that I’m trying to read (don’t ask), and quantum physics is guaranteed to make my head hurt even more than it does already because of the odd book, and the thesis-type introduction . . .
And it’s still only January!
Then there’s the small matter of starting the next Parker book, which I’d rather like to do. For the first time, I’m very much inclined to take a year away from all of the ancillary stuff, and just write. After all, that’s what I’m supposed to be, isn’t it? A writer. And writers write. If there comes a point when the extraneous, associated things are taking too much of a toll on writing time, then that’s probably the point at which the writer needs to sit down and figure out some alternative arrangements. But the business of being a published writer has changed so much in the past decade that, increasingly, writing is only part of the job description, and the challenge is to find a way to keep all of these sometimes conflicting demands in, if not a perfect balance, then an imperfect balance that constantly threatens to fall apart around your ears but somehow does not.
Oh well. Even in the midst of all of this, I still occasionally take a moment and think, well, there’s nothing else that you’ve ever wanted to do more than be a writer, and you’re very fortunate to be doing it at all. And so, given the day that is in it as I write, with Barack Obama trying on various ties in order to pick just the right one for the occasion, it’s worth recalling, once again, James Thurber’s wonderful observation:
"There is, of course, a certain amount of drudgery in newspaper work, just as there is in teaching classes, tunnelling into a bank, or being President of the United States. I suppose that even the most pleasurable of imaginable occupations, that of batting baseballs through the windows of the RCA Building, would pall a little as the days ran on."
Now, it’s back to work for me . . .
This week John read
A Death In Vienna by Daniel Silva
The Damned United by David Peace
All The Dead Voices by Declan Hughes
and listened to
To Lose My Life by White Lies
Rocking Horse by Kelli Ali
Laughing Stock by Talk Talk
To begin with, I’ve been filming a documentary entitled THE HONEYCOMB WORLD, which was commissioned by RTE, the Irish national broadcaster, and will be broadcast early next year. Well, I say filming, but I largely sit around talking about myself while other people film me, so I’m not sure if I qualify for the verb ‘filming’. Next week it all gets a bit busier, though, as the crew and I head over to Maine to do a week there. Cue pictures of me looking thoughtful, or perhaps just trying to remember what my feet feel like, as it’s rather chilly in Maine at the moment.
At the same time, having finished the fairly minor edits for THE LOVERS, I’ve returned to an odd book that I’ve been humming and hawing over for quite some time. Basically, I set aside three months to get it finished, with the intention of having it done by the end of February. It may never see the light of day but, if it does, it’s likely to appear between THE LOVERS and the next Parker novel, which is due in the middle of 2010.
That urge to experiment, to try new things that may fail, is one that’s becoming increasingly difficult to indulge as time goes on. The will is there, but the time simply is not. By taking a few months to work on this book, I’ve set back the next Parker book by a similar amount of time, and I expect that I will be looking for a certain degree of indulgence from my editors when it comes to delivery dates later this year.
Nevertheless, it was important to me to work on this project. There was no way that I could start work on the next Parker book immediately after finishing the last one. I just didn’t want to, and I was finding it impossible to keep ideas for it straight in my head. At the same time, I didn’t want to not write. Time is too valuable, and there are all sorts of ideas that I’d dearly love to pursue. I’d feel guilty just sitting around, waiting for some set date to approach on which I’d promised myself I’d return to Parker, so instead it seemed appropriate to start something else.
The first result of this is that I have a clear head of sorts, and I’m about ready to start on the next mystery novel. The second result, and the bad news, is that I’ve had a near constant headache for three months, mainly because the focus on this other book has been so intense that it’s taken a bit of a toll, I think. Don’t get me wrong: I’ve enjoyed doing it, and even if it never appears in print the pleasure of it has been enough, but I seem always to be aware of a ticking clock somewhere in the background; or rather, a series of ticking clocks, each set to a different time, as the various demands and requests pile up.
There are invitations to festivals, some of them so far in the future that I’ll be able to travel to them by teleportation, or in a rocket ship, but I have to make a decision on my attendance NOW!; there are publishers looking for publicity tours, sometimes in different countries at the same time, so that along with teleportation I’m starting to take an avid interest in cloning; I promised to write an introduction for a book of short stories, and then found that the subject matter required something close to a thesis, which made my head hurt more; three requests for contributions to short story collections have come in already this year, even though I don’t really write many short stories, and anyway I’m already semi-committed to delivering a story to a collection by March, even if I haven’t written it yet; I’ve promised to write an essay for a book on Irish crime fiction, and I haven’t written that yet either; someone sends me an interview to be done by e-mail, with over 50 questions (e-mail interviews are one of the reasons that I curse the Internet, because essentially, if I agree to do one, I end up writing it myself; as a journalist, I tend to avoid them like a plague, as they’re an unfair imposition on the person being interviewed), yet he’s a nice guy, and I know I’ll end up doing up, but 50 questions is a lot; I have three books on quantum physics that I’m trying to read (don’t ask), and quantum physics is guaranteed to make my head hurt even more than it does already because of the odd book, and the thesis-type introduction . . .
And it’s still only January!
Then there’s the small matter of starting the next Parker book, which I’d rather like to do. For the first time, I’m very much inclined to take a year away from all of the ancillary stuff, and just write. After all, that’s what I’m supposed to be, isn’t it? A writer. And writers write. If there comes a point when the extraneous, associated things are taking too much of a toll on writing time, then that’s probably the point at which the writer needs to sit down and figure out some alternative arrangements. But the business of being a published writer has changed so much in the past decade that, increasingly, writing is only part of the job description, and the challenge is to find a way to keep all of these sometimes conflicting demands in, if not a perfect balance, then an imperfect balance that constantly threatens to fall apart around your ears but somehow does not.
Oh well. Even in the midst of all of this, I still occasionally take a moment and think, well, there’s nothing else that you’ve ever wanted to do more than be a writer, and you’re very fortunate to be doing it at all. And so, given the day that is in it as I write, with Barack Obama trying on various ties in order to pick just the right one for the occasion, it’s worth recalling, once again, James Thurber’s wonderful observation:
"There is, of course, a certain amount of drudgery in newspaper work, just as there is in teaching classes, tunnelling into a bank, or being President of the United States. I suppose that even the most pleasurable of imaginable occupations, that of batting baseballs through the windows of the RCA Building, would pall a little as the days ran on."
Now, it’s back to work for me . . .
This week John read
A Death In Vienna by Daniel Silva
The Damned United by David Peace
All The Dead Voices by Declan Hughes
and listened to
To Lose My Life by White Lies
Rocking Horse by Kelli Ali
Laughing Stock by Talk Talk
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