Ask the Author: Derek Smith
Answered Questions (6)
Derek Smith
I enjoy it when readers say they enjoyed a book of mine. After all, I write to be read and I want my typical reader to get to the end and say that was good. That is the be all and end all of my effort. I also like not having to wear a suit. I can turn up to various events in casual clothes and no one says a thing. Thoreau said, I paraphrase, beware any enterprise where you have to wear new clothes. Dead right. Politicians and bankers take note.
Derek Smith
Read a lot. And if you like a passage in a book, then write it out, and think what works in it. You could find a paragraph in each chapter of the book and write them out. The act of copying gets you more engaged with the writing, stopping you, enabling you to think line by line how a piece works.
Derek Smith
I am working on a series of crime books entitled Jack of All Trades. I wanted to write some crime fiction but didn't want to write one centred around the police or a private eye. So I needed someone whose work would take them into different settings - and I came up with the character of a builder, Jack. His work takes him into assorted settings, so far: a millionaire's house, a tenancy block, a private school and a park. The one I have just finished is set in the park, entitled Jack by the Hedge. Jack has come there to rebuild a wall that was knocked down by a drunken tractor driver. It is the fourth of the Jack of All Trades series. None has been yet published. They are with an agent, Vanessa Holt, who is trying to place them for me.
Derek Smith
I begin writing whether I am inspired or not. Initially a writer has little to go on, a one line idea, perhaps a setting. That's not a lot to get inspired about. I need to build it into a pile, rather like a compost heap, which begins to heat up of itself. That heat is my inspiration. To get there, I need to throw into the heap the various characters and the setting in detail. How the characters might interact, the conflict between them, possibilities of romance, and in the books I am writing at the moment, murder. At a certain point the mass begins to steam, that's when I get away from the planning and start writing the book.
Derek Smith
My most recent published book is Murder At Any Price, published as an ebook. A few months before, I'd been to a writing festival and heard a crime writer talking about his books. I read one of them and didn't think much of it, so I decided to have a go myself. I used the type of situation that the writer had used in his first book, which was to begin the book with the main character in an awful situation and see where that leads. My main character, Jim, wakes up in a strange bedroom, naked, next to a naked woman whose head has been smashed in. He doesn't know who she is or how he got there. Beginning with his shock and horror, I continued. I had to think where is, who is the murdered woman, who might he meet in the house, knowing he would be prime suspect for murder with his DNA all over the bed. I find a strong situation like this really gets the mental adrenaline going.
Derek Smith
Writers block as I know it is a mixture of boredom of your current writing which becomes lack of ideas for any future writing. The way out for me is to read. Read lots. You need to blow away the boredom and get your energy back. So let other writers energise you, give you possibilties.
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