Ask the Author: Malcolm Richards
Answered Questions (3)
Malcolm Richards
The ideas behind The Hiding House came from a few different places. The setting is very much from my childhood. I grew up in Cornwall and spent almost every weekend at my grandmother's farm, which was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. She lived quite an isolated life in that respect, and I think there's a lot of that in the book.
I'd also been teaching children with complex emotional and behavioural needs at the time, and some of the experiences that they'd lived through were just shocking. They were tough these kids, they'd learned to cope with terrible circumstances. I have the utmost respect for them. I wanted to put that resilience in the book - kids are much more resourceful than we give them credit for.
Finally, I'd grown up with an obsession with Grimms fairy tales. I love the darkness to them - the original versions are essentially horror stories for kids! It seemed fitting, giving the settng of the story, a bit of a fairy tale twist - which is why you'll find several analogies and references in The Hiding House.
I'd also been teaching children with complex emotional and behavioural needs at the time, and some of the experiences that they'd lived through were just shocking. They were tough these kids, they'd learned to cope with terrible circumstances. I have the utmost respect for them. I wanted to put that resilience in the book - kids are much more resourceful than we give them credit for.
Finally, I'd grown up with an obsession with Grimms fairy tales. I love the darkness to them - the original versions are essentially horror stories for kids! It seemed fitting, giving the settng of the story, a bit of a fairy tale twist - which is why you'll find several analogies and references in The Hiding House.
Malcolm Richards
I'm busy redrafting my new novel. I can't say too much about it just yet, but it delves much more into the mystery genre than The Hiding House, my previous novel, did. I'm pretty excited about it.
Malcolm Richards
Writer's block can be a real nightmare for me, but I've learned a few tools to combat it.
1. Get up and move away from your laptop. There's no point getting angry with yourself while staring at a blank page.
2. Go do the laundry, clean the house, go for a walk - I find monotonous, repetitive actions help to free up my brain.
3. I learned this trick from someone else - if you find you're procrastinating when you should be writing, get up and go stand in a corner of the room until you're geared up to write again. It may sound like I'm sending you to the naughty corner, but it's a good trick to take your mind off Buzzfeed and refocus it on your writing.
4. Even if you think that what you're writing sucks, remind yourself that you can always redraft it later. I've got stuck on this so many times, freezing up on a first draft because I'm spending too much time focusing on how well I'm writing, instead of just writing. For me, the first draft is about getting words onto a page, getting the story out. The second draft is where you make sense of the story, and the third is where you can go to town on making your prose shine.
5. Write every day. Even if it's for five minutes. Even if you write just a paragraph. A sentence. A word. As long as you show up and write something - even if you think it's crap (see number 4), you'll find yourself chipping away at that block little by little.
1. Get up and move away from your laptop. There's no point getting angry with yourself while staring at a blank page.
2. Go do the laundry, clean the house, go for a walk - I find monotonous, repetitive actions help to free up my brain.
3. I learned this trick from someone else - if you find you're procrastinating when you should be writing, get up and go stand in a corner of the room until you're geared up to write again. It may sound like I'm sending you to the naughty corner, but it's a good trick to take your mind off Buzzfeed and refocus it on your writing.
4. Even if you think that what you're writing sucks, remind yourself that you can always redraft it later. I've got stuck on this so many times, freezing up on a first draft because I'm spending too much time focusing on how well I'm writing, instead of just writing. For me, the first draft is about getting words onto a page, getting the story out. The second draft is where you make sense of the story, and the third is where you can go to town on making your prose shine.
5. Write every day. Even if it's for five minutes. Even if you write just a paragraph. A sentence. A word. As long as you show up and write something - even if you think it's crap (see number 4), you'll find yourself chipping away at that block little by little.
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