A Silly Question
I went to my editor and asked ‘What shall I write next?’
It was, as he said to me kindly over a plateful of garlic prawns in Oxford, a bit of a silly question. It’s certainly a question to which wise editors might not offer a straight answer. He didn’t say why, but I can guess. There are two reasons.
1) No editor wants to give the impression that they are commissioning a work that they are not, in fact, commissioning.
2) An author is more likely to write his best by writing what he wants to write, rather than writing to order. That’s not to say his best will sell, but if you’ve got enough good authors writing their best then you’ve a fair chance that one or more of them will have a lucky strike. My editor has three best sellers on his list this year.
I know all that. I also know it’s a sign of weakness in an author even to ask the question. But authors are nervy creatures and we’re allowed to get the jitters. And I also know that out beyond the world of the editor there’s a legion of sales executives and booksellers who would answer ‘write a vampire novel’ without a second thought. Sales of vampire novels are propping up three whole publishing empires at the moment, my agent says. Yup. Vampires. Right.
As it happens, somewhere around the coffee stage, the suggestion that I might write a horror novel did creep into the conversation. And it wasn’t me that made it. And I could. Actually, I could see two quite different horror novels that I could write. They wouldn’t be the blood and guts type, no. Vampires, no. Not this time anyway. But people disappearing, things you half–see but don’t quite… Yes, I could go there.
After, that is, I’ve done some other things. Because I also spent a certain amount of time during this talk convincing myself (if not my editor) that the two ideas I already have in my head might be rather good ideas after all. And I mustn’t forget that I’ve sort-of promised myself that if I find a publisher for Keys of Cleary then there’s definitely going to be sequels. So that’s five or six books I now have tentatively on the project list. (There must have been something in those prawns. )
And the really difficult question is – which of them should I write first?