FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Do you have a writing routine?
Yes, but it is disciplined chaos. I get up every day at 5am and read for 10 minutes with a coffee, then get right down to it. I usually manage an hour or two in the morning and, depending on how busy my workday is, more later. I don't find writing sprints work for me - I need time to settle into the headspace for writing. On an exceptionally good day, I might manage 2000 words, but 500-750 is a more realistic daily goal.
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Do you write an outline? Plotter or 'Pantser'?
When a new idea comes to me, I'm so desperate to get it out on the page that I write the first few chapters in a blur, and end up figuring out where to take the story after that. About 10,000 words in, when I'm starting to flounder, I'll force myself to sit down and write the outline I should have made to begin with, and which inevitably would have saved me considerable time and deleted words in the drafting and revising stages.
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Is writing your full-time job?
Not at the moment, no. I work for my wife's parents on their family farm and write in whatever spare time I have. I'm extremely fortunate to be in the situation I'm in.
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How long did it take you to write The Gravedigger Scribe?
I began drafting in March 2020, when the pandemic hit and the UK went into national lockdown. Like so many others, I was furloughed from my job and consequently had a lot of time on my hands. Writing full-time, I completed the first draft in ~9 months, and spent a further 3 months revising.
What is The Gravedigger Scribe about?
I describe it as a portal fantasy - a story in which a person is transported from one world to another by some sort of magic - for adults. At the heart of the novel is a girl who believes that the worth of a life is measured by the things they've achieved, and a group comprised of alternate-reality versions of her who need her help catching a killer. In a line, it's Into the Spider-Verse by way of The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.
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While writing the book, did you have any music or a playlist you listened to?
Though I often write with headphones in, I'm completely incapable of listening to music while writing. I need total silence or the white noise of a cafe/library to concentrate. Having said that, Taylor Swift released her album 'Folklore' partway through my drafting and the wordplay, imagery and metaphor in those songs lingered in my head for weeks.
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Do you have any advice for other aspiring writers?
Read widely and often. Write or revise something every day, even if you have to get up before sunrise to do it. Don't revise while you're drafting - just keep pushing forward, pouring out the story, and keep notes on what needs changed retroactively.
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Which author, or works, inform your writing style the most?
The answer to this tends to be 'the best things I've read most recently'. Very often it's the act of consuming one or two works that just BLEW ME AWAY that serve as the inspirational catalyst to begin a new project and my style/voice tends to have echoes of those authors in it. For The Gravedigger Scribe, those authors were Alix E. Harrow, Erin Morgenstern, Madeline Miller, Pat Rothfuss, and V. E. Schwab.
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What are you working on now?
I'm currently working on revisions to The Gravedigger Scribe, and outlining my next book, which it's a little too early to say anything about... watch this space.