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| ‘A first draft is indecisive and messy – the polishing coming later on’ … Emma Donaghue. Illustration: Alan Vest |
MY WRITING DAY
Emma Donoghue: ‘I have only from 8.30am to 3.30pm to work. It’s a very healthy discipline’
The author on her ‘regime’, research and adapting her work for the screenEmma Donoghue
Saturday 7 January 2017
W
hen I was a child I had some strange ideas about what being a writer entailed. My dad is a literary critic, who has written many more books than I have. He somehow fitted them all into his teaching life and so, apparently from nowhere, I would see boxes of books with his name on the spine turning up at the house every now and then. At the same time, I developed the theory that to be a famous writer meant you first had to die young, and then wait for your work be discovered years after your death. This was based on some weird conjunction of Emily Dickinson and Anne Frank, but it all meant that I never really saw writing as an ordinary job, and it didn’t help much when I started my career and began to treat writing as, more or less, an ordinary job.
My routine in the early years involved reading for an hour or two over breakfast before wondering if I felt like writing that day. That was before I had kids. They are now 12 and nine, and these days I put them on the school bus and run to my computer knowing I have only from 8.30am to 3.30pm to work. It’s a very healthy discipline, especially as within that time you also have to administer a career in terms of answering emails, making travel arrangements and the rest of it, so sometimes it can take a while to get to the actual writing.
When I do start to write I try not to worry too much about whether it is actually any good. The great thing is to get it on the page. In a first draft the prose is always very indecisive and messy, and I might put in four different adjectives with slashes between them because I’m not sure which one to use. If I’m writing on an aeroplane or a bus, I always tilt my screen away from the person beside me because I’d hate the idea that they would look at this pile of rubbish and ask if I really am an author. But a lot of writers become a bit inhibited by asking whether something is a beautiful sentence. I see it much more in craft terms, more like being a landscape gardener or a carpenter. The thing is to make a solid structure first knowing you can do the polishing later on. The one recent novelty to my regime has been a treadmill desk which means I now spend some of my time walking as I write. It hasn’t made the writing any better, or any worse, but it does mean I don’t have to fret about making time for the gym.
The main variation among my novels is not the writing but the research. Sometimes I stick closely to facts. Other times, as in my latest book The Wonder, I make up the story but the background is as historically accurate as possible, so I spend time checking whether a particular bird would have been in the Irish Midlands in 1859. There is a bigger difference between the practice of writing novels and screenplays. With a novel you have all the power and editors send elegant notes with polite suggestions (which nevertheless can be absolutely crucial). In TV and film they have all the power and you get rather crisp comments about a problem with page 37 which they expect you to fix immediately. I had a great experience filming Room with Lenny Abrahamson, and was allowed a say in everything. But I knew I didn’t have the final say, which is fine as long as you know that from the beginning.
By the time the kids do get home at 3.30pm I can find that my loyalty is still to the characters in my book and it’s hard to meet the needs of real human beings. I’m aware there is a selfishness to writing. But, like a football match, there can be some extra time if they pick up a book themselves. I will always have my laptop at tennis classes and will be typing at the back while the other parents are clapping at the front.
When I eventually do finish there is no celebratory drink. Even when I send off the final draft, if I have more time left that day I will start the next book. It’s not quite like Trollope, who supposedly could finish one novel at 4.45pm, and work on the next until his regular knocking-off time of 5pm, but I do very much admire that spirit. So I try to be as industrious and unpretentious about the process as I can and that would be my advice to any aspiring writers. I know if I was wedded to a special pen, or particular violins playing in the background, I’d have very few productive writing days in a year.
• Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder is published by Picador.
THE GUARDIAN
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