Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "ian-rankin"

Martin Walker’s series of crime novels about the chief of police of a small town in the beautiful Perigord region of France are a delight. When we met at a recent “British Crime Fiction Night” in Darmstadt, Germany, he described the books as “French porn – wine, food, women – in a crime fiction frame.” Certainly Martin’s bon vivant personality matches the playfulness of his fiction (Though he's a Scot by birth, he divides his time between Washington DC and his vineyard in France). But he’s also a former correspondent with The Guardian and his novels have significant undertones of social commentary, as you’ll see from the interview here. By mixing the pleasures of France – the “porn” – with its dark underside, the Bruno novels remind me very much of the terrific Inspector Montalbano series, where the Sicilian setting is the beautiful backdrop to a detective who enjoys a good dinner as much as nabbing the villain. So here’s Martin Walker, the Andrea Camilleri of the Dordogne.

How long did it take you to get published?
Not long at all. My first book, non-fiction, was commissioned. My first Bruno novel sold as soon as my agent offered it.

Would you recommend any books on writing?
No. Just read and read and read and get a feel for what works.

What’s a typical writing day?
There isn’t one, but whether on a plane or a train or at home or in a hotel I try and do at least a thousand words a day.

Plug your latest book. What’s it about? Why’s it so great?
The latest book is ‘The Dark Vineyard,’ third in the Bruno series, which is about fraud in the truffle market in France, which traces back to China and to consequences of France’s 1954 defeat in its failed colonial war in Vietnam. Along the way, it involves militant Greens, a lot of wonderful French food and the complex romantic life of my hero, Bruno. I think it’s my best Bruno novel yet, because he seems to grow as a character with each book and my portrait of modern France gets richer. While writing it, I more than once had that magical experience of a character doing something I had neither planned nor expected, as if Bruno was taking on a life of his own.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.<\a>

Last week I demonstrated why writers who post their “Rules for Writers” are making a big mistake. I included my own five – well, really six – rules for writers. They were a big success. So I thought of some more.

First a recap of my first six rules:

If asked to provide a list of rules for writers, don’t do it.
If you must (because your agent says it’s good for your name to appear in The Guardian), then try not to be cute.
Reveal no stupid prejudices.
Write rules for writers, rather than rules for people who CAN’T write.
Try to have your rules make sense.
If you can’t write, please don’t write.

You may be wondering how I came to formulate these rules. The answer: from reading rules that were anywhere from daft to offensive to pointless to just plain incomprehensible and which had previously been posited by notable writers including Elmore Leonard, Jonathan Franzen, Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Richard Ford, and Anne Enright.

I concluded my post by writing that George Orwell had said it all and there ought to be no further Rules for Writers. Orwell’s last rule, however, suggests that rules are there to be broken. As are statements made on blogs. That’s why I’m adding to my list of rules today.

Rule 7: Don’t be precious.
Helen Dunmore’s rules for writers include “Read Keats’s letters” and “Learn poems by heart.” Perhaps they also should include “Pronounce Rs as Ws” and “Always wear an Ascot while writing.” Thanks to modern educational slackness, no one schooled after the early 1970s can learn a poem by heart without intense effort –– effort that should really be directed toward writing the book.

Rule 8: Don’t be ashamed of earning a living.
Probably you won’t. Earn a living, that is. But if you do, there are plenty of people who’ll suggest you should be ashamed of yourself. You’ve sold out. You must’ve planned your book with “the market” in mind. Geoff Dyer, author of Paris Trance, gives his Rule 1 as “Never worry about the commercial possibilities of a project. That stuff is for agents and editors to fret over.” I suppose you can always marry someone rich. But if you’re intending to write for more than an hour or so a day, you’d better at least consider whether anyone will buy it. For the most part agents and editors will expect you to do the fretting, unless they’ve spent a big chunk of cash on your advance and, therefore, the editor needs to make it pay. In which case, you obviously already considered the commercial possibilities… One of Ian Rankin’s Rules of Writing, I should note, is “Know the market.” Books are sold in shops – well, some of them are – so it’s a product and it has to be sold eventually.

Rule 9: Ignore Colm Toibin’s Rule 5.
The Irish writer says “No alcohol, sex, or drugs while you are writing.” Unless he means “don’t try to type up a chapter while snorting cocaine off a hooker’s ass and sucking champagne through a straw from a flute wedged between her thighs,” I think this is a bad rule. Even then it’d be debatable at best.

Rule 10: Really ignore Toibin’s Rule 5.
It’s a very, very bad rule.