Exclusively for members of ReadItSwapIt, Linda Gillard, author of Emotional Geology, A LIfetime Burning and Star Gazing, has very kindly agreed to answer questions about her books and her life as a writer on this thread.  Unlike previous author chats we've had, there is no set time for this one.  Instead, Linda will pop on regularly to answer questions posted here, so it will develop into an ongoing dialogue.

 

Linda graduated from Bristol University, then trained as an actress at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.  Whilst under-employed at the National Theatre, Linda developed a sideline as a freelance journalist.  She ran two careers concurrently for a while, then gave up acting to raise and family and write from home.

Twelve years later, she re-trained as a primary teacher and taught in Norfolk for some years.  She moved to the Isle of Skye where she lived for six years in a house on a hill overlooking the Cuillin mountain range, featured in her first novel, Emotional Geology (short-listed for the 2006 Waverton Good Read Award).

A Lifetime Burning was published by Transita in 2006 and Star Gazing, set partly on Skye, was published by Piatkus in 2008.  Film rights have been sold for both Star Gazing and Emotional Geology.

Star Gazing was short-listed earlier this year for Romantic Novel of the Year, and has recently been short-listed for the Robin Jenkins Literary Award, the UK's first environmental book award.

 

So, now's your chance to ask Linda about her work.  And if you're not familiar with her books but would like to find out more, there is lots of information on Linda's website at www.lindagillard.co.uk.  Linda also has copies of Emotional Geology and A Lifetime Burning available for swapping on this site.  Her user name is lindagillard if you want to check out her swapping profile and booklist.

Thanks Penny, and hi to Linda whose books an awful lot of us are really enjoying immensely. So go on Linda, I'm holding out on reading A Lifetime Burning as a stored up treat - tell us about your next book, and when we'll be able to get our mitts on it.... !  

 I too am saving A Lifetime Burning for a rainy day...

I'd like to know how you decide on names for your characters or do you find they name themselves ?

 

Could I ask which of your glittering achievements gave you most pleasure?  Getting your first deal with a publisher, being nominated for the first time for a prize, or seeing the film rights sold?  Oh, and are the films in production yet?

Thanks for the intro Penny. I'm very pleased to be here.

Annie asked...

annie130:

 tell us about your next book, and when we'll be able to get our mitts on it.... !  

 I don't have any good news on this yet I'm afraid. I don't have a publisher for my 4th novel, HOUSE OF SHADOWS which is very different from STAR GAZING (which is why I don't have  a publisher for it.) The manuscript is doing the rounds and it's getting what are known in the trade as "rave rejections" - lots of praise but they don't want to publish. The usual reasons given are:

1. They don't know what genre it is and therefore wouldn't know how to market it.

2. My sales record doesn't justify bringing out a 4th book. (Publishing is totally sales-driven. Since the credit crunch the mid-list author has gone to the wall. Even Iain Banks has gone public aout being offered a smaller advance for his new book. It's dire right now.)

So I dunno is the short and sad answer to your Q, Annie. Ch. 1 of HOUSE OF SHADOWS is on my website (in the News section) but I know that's not a lot of use to you. It's a family-with-dark-secrets story and, unusually for me, it has a young heroine.

Undaunted, I am trying to write a sort of STAR GAZING Part Deux which is another unusual love story. It's called MARRYING MAGNUS and the USP this time is that the hero & heroine are divorced but they never should have done the deed because actually, though they fight all the time, they still lurve each other. Not sure if I can make this work but it seemed an interesting premise.

 

 

 

jobar:

I'd like to know how you decide on names for your characters or do you find they name themselves ?

 

 

Aah, names!... A nightmare.

My main criterion is that the name should be easy/quick to type. Seriously! I'm going to spend up to 2 years typing it. So I tend to go for short easy to spell names. (No heroine of mine will ever be called Barbara because I just can't type it.) So I've had Rose, Gwen and now Fay in the work-in-progress (hereafter wip).

A LIFETIME BURNING  was an interesting challenge because I was writing about twins who were inseparable, almost indivisible, so I wanted names that were almost the same. I settled on Rory and Flora and they called themselves Ror & Flor.

I do think names are destiny. I think a character develops according to the name you give them. I was asked to change Calum's name in EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY. My editor thought it was roo similar to Gavin and the men could be confused by the reader. (Duh! That was sort of the point...) I tried but I couldn't do it. It was like trying to rename your kids. These people are as real to me as members of my family.

I can't start writing a book until I have all the major names chosen. I've tried writing about X, Y and Z but it doesn't work.

I also get "messages" about names, a feeling that I will use them one day. I've felt for a long time I was going to write about a hero called Connor. (I tried in HOUSE OF SHADOWS but that wasn't him. He turned out to be Alfie.)

Ooh, names... Very weird stuff. But it's such a kick when you light on the right name. There's an emotional clunk and you feel you can get going.

 

pennyt:

Could I ask which of your glittering achievements gave you most pleasure?  Getting your first deal with a publisher, being nominated for the first time for a prize, or seeing the film rights sold?  Oh, and are the films in production yet?

Well, this will sound like I'm sucking up to all you readers but honest to God, the thing I've been most excited about has been hearing from and in many instances meeting my readers. There is nothing to beat an email from someone who raves about your book and says it has made their day (or in the case of EMO GEO) changed their life for the better. Sometimes the emails move me to tears. (A very troubled Canadian teenager emailed me to say as a consequence of reading EMO GEO she'd stopped self-harming and started writing poetry. Who needs the Booker?...)

There is nothing I've experienced which has compared with that interaction with readers. Not holding my first copy of my first book, not going into Waterstones and seeing several copies of it on the shelf. I don't think I write to feel validated as a person, so it's not really an ego/fame thing for me. (I was a journalist for many years so seeing my name in print is a bit ho-hum.) But to be able to talk to readers about my characters and hear what they think about my stories...!  And to find out that we share the same taste in men!! Wow.

re the films of EG and SG: all that's happened so far is that there is some funding earmarked and people have made positive noises about both projects, but the producer is now trying to get a screenwriter on board who will write a "treatment" of the books so we can move on to the next stage in getting the funding which will pay the writer to write a screenplay. When they have a writer and a treatment they can start thinking about actors and depending on the actors you can then get more money on the strength of their names.

But getting a film made can take 10 years. By which time - sob - Gerard Butler will be too old to play Keir. but hey, I have Sam Worthington (TERMINATOR SALVATION) in mind as back-up. ;-)

 

 Oops, I see these answers are coming out quite long. Is that too much information? That's the trouble once I get started talking about my babies...

Penny let me know if you think shorter answers would be better.

lindagillard:

 Oops, I see these answers are coming out quite long. Is that too much information? That's the trouble once I get started talking about my babies...

Penny let me know if you think shorter answers would be better.

Personally, I'm loving these wonderful full answers, Linda!  Though shorter answers might be better for you (ie less time-consuming), it's great to get such in-depth insights into how you write.  I'm particularly fascinated by your comments about characters' names, and agree with you that you can't just substitute one name for another with no consequences in terms of how that character would behave and be perceived by readers.  Thanks very much for your prompt answers!

 

lindagillard:

 

But getting a film made can take 10 years. By which time - sob - Gerard Butler will be too old to play Keir. but hey, I have Sam Worthington (TERMINATOR SALVATION) in mind as back-up. ;-)

I had no idea it could take so long... How depressing!

 

pennyt:

lindagillard:

 

But getting a film made can take 10 years. By which time - sob - Gerard Butler will be too old to play Keir. but hey, I have Sam Worthington (TERMINATOR SALVATION) in mind as back-up. ;-)

I had no idea it could take so long... How depressing!

 

 

 Think of when Philip Pullman's NORTHERN LIGHTS came out. And then think how many years later the movie THE GOLDEN COMPASS appeared.

Some films never get made because Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or George Clooney have bought the rights to a book that's taken their fancy but they're too busy to hassle to get it made. I think it took a long time for Joe Simpson's TOUCHING THE VOID to get made because Cruise owned the rights but had so many other projects on the go. Then eventually the rights must have reverted to Simpson who must then have sold them to someone who really wanted to make a film.

As a writer you can make a reasonable living out of selling rights for films that never get made! (The rights have to be re-bought every year.)

The production company that made FINGERSMITH & TIPPING THE VELVET bought the rights to A LIFETIME BURNING and spent a year trying to sell it as a 2 x 90 min episode drama (definitely after the watershed), but no one would commission it because there were so many budget cutbacks at the time. The rights have reverted to me so it's available again. But the producers said they remain committed to the project and will keep trying to get the BBC interested.

So I'm in the perhaps unusual position of having had 3 novels published, all of which have been bought at some point to make tv drama or films. I'm not sure what that says, but I suppose it indicates I'm good at dramatic conflict. I think it must also indicate that I write good roles for actors. (Not surprising really - I used to be one.) As you're probably aware, the majority of films made nowadays are derived from novels. Whether or not they get made often depends on whether they're perceived as a vehicle for a particular star.

lindagillard:

Some films never get made because Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or George Clooney have bought the rights to a book that's taken their fancy but they're too busy to hassle to get it made. I think it took a long time for Joe Simpson's TOUCHING THE VOID to get made because Cruise owned the rights but had so many other projects on the go. Then eventually the rights must have reverted to Simpson who must then have sold them to someone who really wanted to make a film.

That's so interesting I never knew that.

princess21:

lindagillard:

Some films never get made because Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or George Clooney have bought the rights to a book that's taken their fancy but they're too busy to hassle to get it made. I think it took a long time for Joe Simpson's TOUCHING THE VOID to get made because Cruise owned the rights but had so many other projects on the go. Then eventually the rights must have reverted to Simpson who must then have sold them to someone who really wanted to make a film.

That's so interesting I never knew that.

 

 Cruise can actually climb (he did a lot of his own climbing in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE) and was apparently very keen to make the film. But I think if he had it might have turned out more like CLIFFHANGER. ;-)

A friend of a friend works for Cate Blanchett in Australia where she runs a theatre compnay. I've asked her to give CB a copy of STAR GAZING in the hope that she would see it as a vehicle. But at this stage what we need most is a screenwriter (ideally with a track record) who feels as passionately about the novels as my female, Scots film producer does.

Feel free to make any suggestions!

Following on from what you said about being unable to start writing until you've got characters and their names established, do you also map out the entire book from beginning to end, chapter by chapter before you start, or do you know roughly where you're going but let it develop as you go?  And if so, do you ever find you've painted yourself into a corner with plot or characters?

 

pennyt:

Following on from what you said about being unable to start writing until you've got characters and their names established, do you also map out the entire book from beginning to end, chapter by chapter before you start, or do you know roughly where you're going but let it develop as you go?  And if so, do you ever find you've painted yourself into a corner with plot or characters?

 This is where I need to know how to do spoilers! Penny can you send me a quick instruction?

No, I never plan an entire book. Mostly I don't plan at all. I might make a few scrappy notes to begin with or I might just "hear a voice" (Flora's 1st person narrative in A LIFETIME BURNING) or see a "vision" of a character in their situtation. ("A woman alone in a light, white room" - EMO GEO.) That's enough to get me started and then the rest of the book is exploration. I don't really ever know what's going to happen. I think if I did, I probably couldn't be bothered to write the book. E M Forster is supposed to have said "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" I don't know what my story is until I've written it.

I have a theory that the page-turning quality of my books that so many readers refer to has a lot to do with the fact that I don't know how things will turn out. The shock revelations come as a shock to me. So I think that probably makes them convincing to read. They aren't contrived, they grow naturally out of the story & characters. They feel inevitable.

I believe the subconscious will, if you let it, write a much better book than your conscious mind. But you really have to trust the process to do that. You have to trust yourself as a writer too. It can be pretty scary not having the scaffolding of a synopsis and a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the book to tell you what to write next. (That's probably how the majority of writers write.)

The writing courses and How To books will tell you to plan. They suggest you need to know where your heroine went to school and what the hero eats for breakfast. But that's because they're in the business of selling writing manuals! The authors have to pretend there is a system and that sypnopses and planning are necessary. They aren't. They're optional. Personally I think synopses from which you write are counter-creative because you'll go for the obvious solution, the cliché, the tidy ending. I believe it's better to give your characters their head and let them dictate to you. In the early days when I was writing my kids used to say to me, "Do you know how it ends?" and I used to say "No, they haven't told me yet", meaning the characters. And the kids thought I was joking. ;-)

A lot of would-be writers tell me they want to write a novel but they don't know what to write about. I say you don't need a plot to get started. You do need believable characters and you do need to have something you want to say. (But you might not know what that is yet.) That's enough to get started. When I started writing EMO GEO I didn't know if Rose's daughter Megan was real or a figment of her disturbed imagination. When I started writing STAR GAZING I wasn't sure whether the hero Keir was real or imaginary. A LIFETIME BURNING opens with Flora's funeral. She's the heroine, but I didn't know when I started how she'd died, just when she'd died. 

It's amazing how much you can write without committing yourself!

One thing I do always know and plan (and this must be related to names I suppose) is what my main characters look and sound like.