We chat to John Boyne about his new thriller
We chat to bestselling author John Boyne about his dark new literary thriller
WHERE do authors get their ideas? If John Boyne got R5 for every time a reader asked him this, he’d be stinking rich. But it’s with this persistent questioning about his creative process that fans pretty much handed him the inspiration for his latest novel on a plate.
The Irish writer, who’s best known for his bestselling 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, has been winning rave reviews for A Ladder to the Sky, a dark satire about a writer who has big dreams but zero imagination. We called John (47) at home in Dublin to quiz him about his new offering.
So John, the question all writers dread: where do you get your ideas?
It’s a mystery. It’s one of those questions writers don’t even want to know the answer to. You find them everywhere around you. I think the creative side of the brain is like a muscle – if you’re using it all the time you’re just open to ideas.
Your latest novel is very much about ideas and the creative process. Can you tell us a bit about it and how it came about?
It’s about a writer who can write but just doesn’t have much of an imagination and has to steal from people. What I wanted to write about more than anything else was ambition. To remember what it was like to be young and extremely ambitious. I suppose in a way it’s a satire on writers and the publishing industry.
Have you ever known someone like Maurice Swift?
Well, he’s an extreme case. But I’ve been publishing novels for almost 20 years so I’ve been around a lot of successful writers and new writers, and seen a lot during that time. I’ve also seen how people can attach themselves to successful writers and perhaps not always with the best intentions – that you can get used a bit sometimes by people and form friendships that aren’t completely honest.
Have you ever struggled with writer’s block?
I haven’t. Generally I’ve been lucky. I just don’t give myself the luxury of having writer’s block. I’m very disciplined – I’m at my desk by 8.30am and tend to work every single day, and I’m always working on a new book. I’m not one of those writers who see it as a chore. Even after all these years I love doing it. By the time I’m coming to the end of a book a new idea is already bubbling away in my mind that I’m getting excited about. So as soon as I finish a book, within a week or two I start on the next one. I don’t have another job so this is what I do every day.
Do you think there’s a limit to how much of the real lives of others you can weave into your work?
I think everything is pretty much fair game.
Your last three books have been much more personal. Why is this?
I think when I started writing The History of Loneliness [which was about the Catholic Church child abuse scandal] I’d just reached a
point in my life where I was more confident as a writer and more experienced. I just made a decision that I wanted to bring myself into the work more. I hadn’t written about Ireland before and I wanted to explore that – and it’s been really good for me to do that and make that change in my writing style.
Which book do you feel most proud of?
I think The Heart’s Invisible Furies. Readers really seemed to rate that one. I enjoyed the humour and also the epic nature of the book.
What would readers be surprised to know about your writing process?
I do 10 to 12 drafts before I show it to anybody. I don’t like to get any early feedback at all. I try to get it into the best possible shape before sending it on to my editor and agent. I don’t show it to family or friends until it’s published.
Where do you write? I can write anywhere. I have an office here in my home but because I travel a lot I’m perfectly happy writing on trains, planes and in hotel rooms.
What’s next on the cards for you? It’ll be a young adult novel. I haven’t published a book for young people in about four years but there’s one coming next year.
When you’re not writing what do you do to
unwind? I play piano and guitar. I cook and play squash a lot – just regular stuff, I guess.
I hear you recently got a tattoo. I’ve actually got two. One is a tattoo relating to Kate Bush from her album Hounds of Love because I’m a big fan. The other [his latest] is, “We are all terminal cases” – which is the last line of The World According to Garp because I’m a big John Irving fan and he’s a great friend of mine.