Ask the Author: Luke Butler
Answered Questions (2)
Luke Butler
Tips for aspiring writers...I barely feel qualified. But I suppose everyone must start somewhere and that’s just it, if you have an idea, even a loose one, make a start and it often formulates later in your head. There is nothing worse than procrastinating over something, whether it be writing or anything else. So just dive in.
I wrote a lot of this story when I was on the move, whether it was on a commute into the city, on an aeroplane. I know many writers tell you to have your own space and keep the door closed but I didn’t really have the option to do that and I felt the momentum of moving around just helped me to think and invent.
I guess the other is fear. Every new writer is nervous that they aren’t qualified enough to put content out there. Everyone worries that what they write perhaps isn’t ‘proper’ because at that stage it isn’t published like their great predecessors. But even they had fear of failure and without it, it won’t propel you to craft your own story so it will never be told. If you don’t tell it then perhaps nobody will, or worse, someone else will and your kick yourself because you had a burning inside that it was your story to tell.
Get your work read by people around you. I found that talking about my work with people cemented what I was trying to achieve with my story. It raised faults and helped me sculpt what it was to become. Don’t take everyone’s perspective as gospel but often they raise the same concerns you had privately about your work and it helps you make a few of the endless decisions you have when writing a book.
Be persistent too. Once you have a manuscript in your hand, just because your rejected by 10 or 20 or even 30 publishers, it doesn’t mean you should stop trying or your writing isn’t good enough. If you sent it off in the first place then you believe in it and writing is subjective so it may not suit every publisher.
I wrote a lot of this story when I was on the move, whether it was on a commute into the city, on an aeroplane. I know many writers tell you to have your own space and keep the door closed but I didn’t really have the option to do that and I felt the momentum of moving around just helped me to think and invent.
I guess the other is fear. Every new writer is nervous that they aren’t qualified enough to put content out there. Everyone worries that what they write perhaps isn’t ‘proper’ because at that stage it isn’t published like their great predecessors. But even they had fear of failure and without it, it won’t propel you to craft your own story so it will never be told. If you don’t tell it then perhaps nobody will, or worse, someone else will and your kick yourself because you had a burning inside that it was your story to tell.
Get your work read by people around you. I found that talking about my work with people cemented what I was trying to achieve with my story. It raised faults and helped me sculpt what it was to become. Don’t take everyone’s perspective as gospel but often they raise the same concerns you had privately about your work and it helps you make a few of the endless decisions you have when writing a book.
Be persistent too. Once you have a manuscript in your hand, just because your rejected by 10 or 20 or even 30 publishers, it doesn’t mean you should stop trying or your writing isn’t good enough. If you sent it off in the first place then you believe in it and writing is subjective so it may not suit every publisher.
Luke Butler
In 2012 my wife Kat and I moved to Brentwood in Essex, where we lived in a converted chapel on the grounds of what was once Essex County Lunatic Asylum.
Outside our front door there were some graves belonging to the staff and patients who really did live between its walls, one of which was a soldier.
My wife worked in mental health at the time too so it became a natural affinity to want to tell a story about this place.
In terms of setting it during the First World War, that came from two things really. One was my romanticism of how I imagined it or at least the contrast serenity of Britain prior to the outbreak of the War. The second came from the fascination in where Mental Health was at that time. The reaction to the first shell shock cases coming back from battle, how processes to illnesses have changed and in many cases, not.
All the characters in Living Inside Raindrops are fictitious but many of the events themselves are real. As I started researching the local home front history of the war, particularly around Brentwood and Southend, that’s really when my inspiration ran wild.
Outside our front door there were some graves belonging to the staff and patients who really did live between its walls, one of which was a soldier.
My wife worked in mental health at the time too so it became a natural affinity to want to tell a story about this place.
In terms of setting it during the First World War, that came from two things really. One was my romanticism of how I imagined it or at least the contrast serenity of Britain prior to the outbreak of the War. The second came from the fascination in where Mental Health was at that time. The reaction to the first shell shock cases coming back from battle, how processes to illnesses have changed and in many cases, not.
All the characters in Living Inside Raindrops are fictitious but many of the events themselves are real. As I started researching the local home front history of the war, particularly around Brentwood and Southend, that’s really when my inspiration ran wild.
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