Today I am feeling a little Lazarus-like thanks to antibiotics. But still happily confined to bed, where I have been engaging in research for novel #2. I am a sort of after the event researcher – I like to write unhindered by mere fact. It’s only after I make something up that I want to go and check if it’s actually true. It can be annoying if it isn’t, but that’s the great thing about fiction-writing. You can change it.
Of course, as a writer you go about with your eyes, ears, nose, hands and imagination open all the time, and you probably carry a notebook with you. I do now (A5 Moleskine, of course), because I realise that things often escape me if I don’t write them down. I rarely refer to the notebook. If it’s in there, it’s in my brain. I also notice how my daydreams go, how parts of my body are affected by, say, smell. The whole kinaesthetic thing. That’s quite useful for storytelling.
But I have had fun with the specific research for novel #2. I have, for example:
- Had tea with a movie star
- Taken Youngson to New York for two weeks. Yes, it was bona fide research, Mr Taxman
- Read books, both academic and schlocky, about stalkers
- Had lengthy correspondence with New York Criminal Lawyers
- Listened to Morrissey until my ears bleed.
And today I lay a-bed and read Macbeth, then I watched an extremely odd and rather sweetly moving documentary about stalkers, called I Think We’re Alone Now by Sean Donnelly. I topped the day off with Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, the most perfect film study of fame-acquired narcissistic personality disorder ever (and fantastically useful to me, as it happened). When I turn 50, I’m going to have a Norma Desmond party. What frocks!
So, all that ‘field work’ done, I’ll be ready for the postponed-by-illness readthrough of the first draft on Monday. Can’t wait. I’ve got all my index cards and marker pens.
Hear, hear. Wasn’t it Julie Burchill who commented that you should never let the facts get in the way of a good story?
But isn’t she a journalist?! (she does spin a good yarn, though)
Yes, she is and she was, I think, referring to journalism, but I was taking ‘artistic’ licence. She has written fiction too, successfully. Her teen novel ‘Sugar Rush’ was adapted for the television.