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Mark Haddon Alan Vest
Illustration by Alan Vest
Illustration by Alan Vest

Mark Haddon: 'I'm not a terribly good writer, but I'm a persistent editor'

This article is more than 7 years old

The author on self-doubt, Scandi crime and throwing away three quarters of what he produces

Some days I can’t write. Some weeks I can’t write. It wouldn’t be such a problem if I could identify those days and weeks in advance. I’d cut my losses and go on a long run up the Thames. I’d get in a box set of Scandi crime or take the train to London for a gallery crawl. I’d paint or draw. But the realisation dawns only around lunchtime after I’ve been staring at a blank screen for hours, or filling it with laboured, unconvincing prose that will need to be deleted later.

The problem, I think, is that I’m not a terribly good writer. I am, however, a very persistent and bloody-minded editor (who, providentially, happens to be married to an even better editor). I’m also ruthless about culling anything that isn’t working. I throw away at least three quarters of what I write, then I draft and redraft what remains until hopefully, somewhere between versions 15 and 25, something happens. That frisson you get when you read your words back and they seem to have been written by someone – or something – that is not quite you. A rightness like a heavy oak door clicking softly home on to its latch.

Consequently, when I sit down to write I know that most of what I produce will end up being discarded, and to write in spite of that knowledge takes more confidence than I possess on a regular daily basis. It’s not an efficient way of working and I wish it were easier but it’s been reasonably productive thus far so I’m stuck with it for the foreseeable future.

It could be worse. I could have a real job. I had one a very long time ago, taking phone orders for Ridgeway Cycles in Ealing, west London. I managed seven weeks of going to the same office every morning and being told what to do before I rang up and said that I had a broken leg and wouldn’t be coming in again. There were several significant turning points in my life as a writer. One of them was reading the Selected Poems of RS Thomas for O-level (the first time I had read anything literary that was as exciting as science). Another was realising that I was unemployable and had better find a job in which I was the only person telling me what to do.

On the days when I do have the requisite confidence I spend the morning working in a string of local cafes (I won’t name them, but two are thanked specifically in The Pier Falls). The hubbub makes me feel part of the busy world and it’s harder to procrastinate when other people are watching. I go back over the last few pages of what I’ve written the day before and comb and tweak and polish, re-immersing myself in that imaginary world in preparation for getting some new words down.

After four hours of concentrated thinking the marginal returns begin rapidly to diminish. The consequences are less disastrous, but writing is like surgery or flying a plane: you need to be firing on all cylinders or you need to be doing something else. So I head home to empty the washing machine, to paint or draw or maybe take that long run up the Thames.

I don’t think I would keep writing without being driven by a constant nagging voice at the back of my head, saying, over and over, “That wasn’t good enough … Write more, write better … Time is running out … ”. On the rare days when I’ve written 1,000 words I enter a state of profound contentment which I rarely feel at any other time. I close my eyes, let out a long, deep breath, listen to what’s going on in my mind and hear … absolutely nothing.

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