‘I NEVER GAVE UP ON MY DREAM’
Her books have sold more than 17m copies and been translated into 40 languages, yet crime writer Val Mcdermid will never settle. She talks to Joanne Finney about the challenges of writing, and singing with her literary rock band
Crime writer Val Mcdermid on the power of perseverance
Not many writers can say they’ve graced the stages of both the Hay Festival and Glastonbury, but Val Mcdermid isn’t your average author. Often dubbed the ‘queen of crime’, Val has written more than 40 books, selling in excess of 17m copies. She also performs regularly as the frontwoman of the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a rock band made up of six authors.
Born in Kirkcaldy on the east coast of Scotland, Val was the first student from a Scottish state school to study English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. After university, she trained as a journalist and in 1987 published her first crime novel, Report For Murder, which launched her career. She’s best known for the series featuring clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill and detective Carol Jordan. The first book featuring the pair, The Mermaids Singing, won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger in 1995 and, along with the second, The Wire In The Blood, was the basis of the ITV series starring Robson Green. She’s also a co-founder of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.
Her latest crime novel, is the first of a new series, which features reporter Allie Burns and has all the trademark qualities of Val’s best books: it’s compulsive, gritty and firmly rooted in the social politics of its time and setting.
Now 66, Val lives in Edinburgh with her wife, academic Jo Sharp, and has a grown-up son, Cameron.
I wanted to be a writer from the age of nine, when I discovered you could get paid money for writing books. I used to love the Chalet School series by Elinor M Brent-dyer and I remember in one of the books, a character gets a letter from her publisher that has a cheque in it. That was the dawning of the light for me! I come from a working-class background and I was very aware that people like me didn’t become writers. I knew you had to have a proper job to fall back on, so I went to university and got myself into journalism.
Many of the anecdotes set in the newsroom in my new book are my own.
When I started at the Daily Record, there were only three women reporters in the newsroom and we weren’t allowed to work together because they thought we’d sit in the corner and swap knitting patterns. I got sent on a lot of stories about miracle babies and weddings; it was only when I got poached by another paper that I started to be taken seriously and was sent to cover a murder trial. I also started writing fiction as soon as I graduated. I thought after three
I don’t think I’ve ever written a decent sentence 11am! before
years of a degree at Oxford I ought to be writing the great English novel. I sent my first attempt off to every publisher I could find in the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook and everybody sent it back almost by return of post. It was awful!
Call no man your master.
My dad firmly believed in that. The message I grew up with was that I was as good as anyone else. I had that in the back of my head from being quite young. I suppose it gave me a conviction that I shouldn’t give in.
My first book to be published, Report For Murder, took me two years to write, all on Monday afternoons.
I worked on a Sunday paper by then and Monday was my day off. Everybody else was at their work, so I could pretty much guarantee getting peace and I just wrote.
When I started out, I thought plot was my weakest point, so I devoted a lot of time to becoming a better storyteller. There weren’t many writing courses around in those days, so I did my DIY version! I took apart the plots of books from writers I admired, from Jane Austen to Margaret Atwood, figuring out how they did it.
The process of putting sentence on sentence is what I love most, but there are times when it’s hellish.
I ended up writing the final section of my novel
A Place Of Execution three or four times and I remember sitting in my editor’s office and bursting into tears, saying I couldn’t do it. Bless her, she’s very supportive but she turned to me and said, ‘You say this every time!’
I’m not an early riser. I start the day with a couple of cups of coffee and go to my desk around 10am. I don’t think I’ve ever written a decent sentence before 11am! I tend to write in short chunks, 20 minutes at a time, then I stop and do something else. At some point I will have gone for a walk, as I find it’s a very good way to clear the log-jams in my brain.
I usually finish a series because the characters have stopped speaking to me.
By the time I wrote the last of the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series, I’d come to the point where I didn’t know what fresh things I had to say. That’s not to say they’ll never return! Certainly my character DCI Karen Pirie is still very much alive in my head. It’s like having friends you haven’t seen for a while, but when you catch up, it’s just like old times.
The best writing advice I’ve been given is also applicable to life:
Don’t keep trying to make the first chapter perfect; just keep faring forward. Make it as good as you can on the day and move on!
I’m proudest of refusing to give up on my dream of being a writer.
I was once asked for a six-word epigraph and mine was: ‘They said I couldn’t do it.’ It’s also about proving to myself I can do what I set out to do. There’s definitely still more to achieve. I’m deeply distrustful of people who say they’re pleased with their latest book. I think if you’re not pushing to do better, why bother?
What I’ve learned from my partner, Jo, is to always keep communicating.
We never stop talking. I’m lucky: my partner is also my best friend, so being together during the lockdowns was not an enormous hardship.
Spending time with my gang of friends will always bring a smile to my face.
What makes me laugh is the spontaneous – when someone tells you something that’s happened to them and you suddenly see the funny side. In my band, the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, some of the stuff Mark Billingham and the other authors come out with makes me howl.
• 1979 (Little, Brown) by Val Mcdermid is out 19 August