2011-02

M
ick Herron has
published six thrillers;
the most recent, Slow
Horses (2010), was
shortlisted for the Crime Writers’
Association’s Ian Fleming Steel
Dagger, awarded to the year’s best
thriller, while his novella Dolphin
Junction won the Ellery Queen
Readers’ Award in 2009. Amy Hole
asked him about his work
What started you writing fiction?
It started with reading, of course.
When I was young I preferred reading
to real life, so wanting to write was a
natural progression from that. I wrote
stories as a child, poetry as a young
adult, and started writing a novel once I
realised I didn’t actually need anyone’s
permission to do so. Reading is always
a catalyst for the young. That’s just one
reason why the planned closure of so
many libraries is a long-term disaster in
the making.
Why thrillers?
I need a solid framework to hang
everything on, otherwise I flounder. I
was 18 months into my one serious
attempt at a non-genre novel, and had
written something like 100,000 words,
before realising that I didn’t know what
it was about. The crime/thriller genre
provides a focus I lacked on that
attempt; and it works as scaffolding, not
as a straitjacket. Slow Horses, for
instance, has a fairly complex plot, but
what interested me most was that it
involved a cast of characters who were
all, in one way or another, failures,
looking for redemption. In this, as in
much else, I’ve been encouraged by
the work of writers like Reginald Hill,
who show what’s possible within the
confines of genre.
How do you start writing a novel?
By putting the moment off for as long
as possible. I have a vague idea for the
book after the one I’m writing now – so
won’t be ready to work on for another
year at least – but have pushed it to the
back of my mind where it can
grow quietly in the darkness. I
haven’t committed anything to
paper yet, on the ground that if
I forget it that easily, it’s
obviously not up to much.
When I’m ready to start
work, on the other hand, I’ll
throw as much as I can onto
paper as quickly as possible –
fragments, mostly; snatches of
dialogue, random descriptions
of places, much of which won’t be used.
But I need a lot of material to hand
before I write the opening words, and
admit I’ve started something new. It’s a
way of avoiding blank page syndrome, I
suppose.
When do you write?
Most days, between about 7.15 and
8.30. More at weekends.
What are the best - and worst -
aspects of what you do?
The best part of writing is redrafting.
The hard work’s been done, and there’s
a peculiar joy in deleting as many words
as possible. Some evenings I struggle
to get down 300 words or so, but I
never have difficulty in removing that
many.
As for the worst part: well, it’s a selfinvolved
pursuit. And an anti-social one.
My first thought on receiving any kind of
invitation tends to be: That’ll cost me an
evening’s work. Which is not a
response most people want to hear
from someone they’ve suggested an
outing to.
Which other authors do you like?
It might be simpler to list the books
I’ve most enjoyed this year – Nicola
Barker, Burley Cross Postbox Theft;
Paul Murray, Skippy Dies; Jonathan
Coe, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell
Sim; Barbara Trapido, Sex and
Stravinsky; Scarlett Thomas, Our Tragic
Universe. Seamus Heaney’s latest
collection, Human Chain, is among his
best. And the books I’m looking forward
to are the new novels by Kate Atkinson
and John le Carré, and Philip Larkin’s
Letters to Monica.
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