This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Mhairi McFarlane, author of Here's Looking at You, stopped by recently to chat about inspiration for fictional characters, why Pride and Prejudice is the perfect novel and finding your voice as an author.
Can you tell us a little about your average writing day?
Argh *burns with shame* I’m yet to really develop such a thing. Imagine a woman with a laptop hanging around Caffè Nero, spending too much time emailing and going on Twitter, and eventually settling down to hammer out chapters at about…well, let’s not be too specific about an exact time. I saw a BAFTA lecture by a top screenwriter recently, and he said he has about two good hours of writing in him a day, after that ‘he does damage’. I think there’s a lot of truth to this. There’s only so much juice in the fruit. *Mhairi’s editor does head-desk*
When you are writing, do you use any famous people or people you know as inspiration?
For characters? Not really, although if I find a celebrity face-a-like, I might check their picture from time to time if descriptive inspiration’s flagging. (Delia in book three is definitely a particular DJ, for example.) And I definitely steal witticisms and turns of phrase from friends and people I chat to online. I’m very honest, they all get into the Rollcall Of Lol in my acknowledgments. As much as places like Twitter can be a time sink – and yes I know what Jonathan Franzen said about no-one with an internet connection writing good fiction (hey, screw you buddy!) – with commercial fiction and conversational dialogue, I think the back and forth of the InternetsWorld is no bad thing. Unless you spend seven hours straight looking at Lolcats.
If you mean ‘are your characters people you know’, I think the breakdown of many of mine is 10% one person I’ve met, 10% another, 80% complete invention. And I promise you, no-one ever recognises themselves. Or if they have, they’ve yet to tell me.What is your favourite Women’s Fiction book of all time and why?
It’s got to be Pride and Prejudice. It has it all: the most incredibly admirable, feisty, sparkly heroine in Elizabeth, mardy, sexy Darcy – I have an angry man fetish – a carriage clock of a plot, and a romance that develops at exactly the right pace, so you completely believe in their eventual union. I love the letter writing. (It actually gave me the confidence to do the emails between James and Anna in Here’s Looking At You. I thought, this could be tiresome, but I love reading sparring partners’ correspondence.) And as Andrew Davies (who wrote the best screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) said – it has such peril. Every time you read it, you feel the fear anew that Lizzy and Darcy might not get their happy ending.
What is your writing process? Do you plan first or dive in? How many drafts do you do?
I do some planning. With plotting, I think of the analogy of it being like a train journey. It has a definite destination, but the scenery along the way and the smaller stops are a surprise. I think too much planning can kill a story dead. You need to leave room for spontaneity. Sometimes while you’re writing you think ‘AHA! I know what they’d do next.’ If you’re locked into a plan that tells you that you can’t do that, it’s the tail wagging the dog.
When I start, I usually write my opening chapters and then the ‘spotlight’ scenes, the big moments I’ll go back over many times. Often that includes the ending. Then I fill in between these key bits. I read Joss Whedon recently saying you should write the bit you feel most inspired to write first, not save it as a treat. I agree. When you’re in love with your story, it shows. If it makes you excited, do it.
Drafts, oooh that’s a ‘how long is a piece of string’ question. My last book went through about five.
What was your journey to being a published author?
Pretty standard and boring really – I mailed a sample and an outline to an agent, she took me on, I got a publishing deal. Hurray! Before that I was a features writer for my local paper. Please don’t take that to mean I had a smooth, gilded path, I really didn’t. I am glossing over years of anxious waiting, rewriting, a handful of rejections and a lot of self doubt and uncertainty, but those times are quite dull to go in to.
What do you think is the biggest myth about being a novelist?
That it’s one long, huge ego stroke about your big talent once you sell a manuscript. It’s still a job like any other – albeit the best job ever – and you have to take feedback on the chin and rewrite often, and uncomplainingly. OK, you can complain, but it makes it harder work for everyone else and people having their patience tested are less likely to do their best work for you in return. If you’ve written something and hit a full stop at the end of draft one and think ‘DONE’ and have no desire to improve it, take notes or even look at it again … then being a writer might not be for you. As Paul Abbott said, writing is rewriting.
What advice can you give to our readers who want to write a novel of their own?
Oooh, well. Write it, not to sound facetious. Don’t feel anyone has to give you permission, the books you’re reading are by people who decided to sit down and write a book. Work on finding your voice – it took me quite a while to hit the right tone. At first I thought, novels = deathly seriously business and tried to be sombre and important. I came off as a bit of a tit. But the most common reason for never having sold a novel is not having written the novel. First task that sets you apart from many, many others: finish.
What are you working on at the moment?
My third book with HarperCollins, a film treatment for my first book You Had Me At Hello, and some TV ideas. My goodness that sounds starry. I’m also working on making my neglected house less of a dirty crap cabin. Ahhh…reality returns.
Thanks, Mhairi!