The Diana Wynne Jones Method From Interview no. 26 • You experience the first inklings of a novel as a taste in the head, and almost instantly there are characters. Or a particular character who’s been walking around in your head suddenly finds a story to belong to. • Take a big plain unlined pad and some nice new pens. You write your first draft in longhand in biro, but they run out too quickly and you hate being interrupted by trivialities. • Sometimes a novel rushes at you. It’s all in your head; you just have to write it down. When that happens you can’t focus on anything else and often write until four in the morning, or until someone says ‘When’s supper?’. Once you put your husband’s shoes in the oven to bake. • When a book comes more slowly, sit in a saggy chair with saggy posture and think and think. • If your story gets complicated, you may make hectic notes, but do not plan; it kills your inspiration. Just follow where the book leads, allowing yourself to be surprised or amused (once you laughed yourself right off the sofa). • You know how your book starts and ends, and maybe a crucial scene in the middle. These scenes are perfectly clear in your mind. You know exactly what people are doing, saying, smelling like; exactly where the furniture is. • Next thing is to get your characters from the beginning to the middle, and then to the end. Put in some attractive scenes to work towards, like carrots, to force yourself to do the donkeywork in between. • Endings are hard. It may take longer to write the last two chapters than the whole of the rest of the book because you have to be so careful. Sometimes there isn’t a happy ending, and that’s upsetting. To keep going, pretend to yourself that you don’t know what’s going to happen. • Don’t worry about getting it exactly right first time around. You can put it right in the second draft, which you do on the computer. This is when you become very meticulous, examining every word in relation to other words, then every sentence, every paragraph, and then all of these in relation to the whole book. • When writing the second draft you work more regular hours, at morning and at night, and the family gets fed properly and the shoes are safe. • Near the end, when you’re sure you have finished your final draft, you find that several significant chunks of the book need to be completely rewritten immediately. You will also find that you have to cut out several of your favourite passages. Only then is it really finished. When a book comes more slowly, sit in a saggy chair with saggy posture and think and think.
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