{"id":537,"date":"2019-09-29T20:44:06","date_gmt":"2019-09-29T20:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/?p=537"},"modified":"2022-09-14T17:19:44","modified_gmt":"2022-09-14T17:19:44","slug":"kate-atkinson-sharing-some-tidbits-from-capital-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/?p=537","title":{"rendered":"Kate Atkinson – sharing some tidbits from Capital Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the highlights of the Capital Crime festival for me was the conversation between Kate Atkinson and Jake Kerridge. I have been a fan of Kate Atkinson since \u2018Behind the Scenes at the Museum\u2019. I loved her literary fiction and was thrilled when she took a turn towards crime with the Jackson Brodie books. It was such a treat to have one of each this year, with \u2018Transcription\u2019 and the latest Jackson book, \u2018Big Sky\u2019. In case anyone would like the inside scoop on Ms Atkinson\u2019s writing practice (I can’t seem to call her Kate) and what comes next, I made some notes\u2026<\/p>\n

Why the gap?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a few years between the first four Jackson Brodie books and this new one. Asked about this, Kate (I have to make myself use it because it\u2019s shorter) said, \u2018I never thought he\u2019d gone; I\u2019d just run out of steam\u2019. She later referred to a concern about getting into \u2018a Jackson rut\u2019. She also suggested that she needed a gap after the TV series was made, so that she didn\u2019t have the actor who played Brodie in her head when she wrote him.<\/p>\n

So will there be more?<\/p>\n

The first 30,000 words of the next Jackson Brodie is written, but the book is on the backburner, so we are going to have to wait. Apparently, it\u2019s probably going to be the book after next. She talked about writing an homage to Agatha Christie\u2019s \u2018The Death at the Sign of the Rook\u2019. She also said she\u2019d thought Brodie would come back in Paris, so maybe that will come later \u2013 and that she really wanted to send him on a cruise ship. Lots to look forward to then.<\/p>\n

What about Jackson?<\/p>\n

\u2018If Jackson was a dog, he\u2019d be a German Shepherd \u2013 or a Collie.\u2019 Although it seems that lots of women tell Kate that they want to marry Jackson, she can\u2019t imagine Jackson settled down \u2013 \u2018he has to have that gunslinger attitude\u2019.<\/p>\n

Readers aren\u2019t falling for Jackson\u2019s looks, though. She pointed out that Jackson doesn\u2019t have a physical persona in the books because she doesn\u2019t tend to describe characters physically.<\/p>\n

What about her move into the crime genre?<\/p>\n

Kate said that she\u2019d been wary of putting a detective into a novel because then it would be a detective novel. She said, \u2018I try not to put myself into a genre because it effects how I write\u2019. However, she says that she now embraces the crime genre quite happily.<\/p>\n

What about coincidence?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll just give you what she said about using coincidence in her plots: \u2018a novel isn\u2019t real life. You\u2019re constructing something; it\u2019s an artificial construct. There is something very satisfying about coincidence’.<\/p>\n

What about the way she writes?<\/p>\n

Apparently, Kate was trained as a secretary and learned to touch type when she was 18. She said, \u2018I can\u2019t think about a novel until I\u2019m typing. Everything changes when I touch those keys\u2019. She said that she doesn\u2019t have much of a routine, although she is very self-disciplined.<\/p>\n

I loved what she had to say about a metaphor for the way she writes. She rejected mosaic and said instead: \u2018I think of writing as like a tapestry\u2019. There\u2019s a lot of interweaving and going back and mending. She likes to achieve a sense of texture and thinks that you have to do a lot of reworking to achieve that. \u2018Transcription\u2019, she said, was very, very character based, whereas \u2018Life after Life\u2019 was more about structure. (She considers \u2018God in Ruins\u2019 to be her best book \u2018by miles\u2019. She referred to it as \u2018a very emotional book\u2019.)<\/p>\n

What does she enjoy most about writing?<\/p>\n

Her immediate answer to this was: \u2018I enjoy finishing a book\u2019. (Hallelujah to that!) She said that she felt a sense of triumph.<\/p>\n

She talked about good days being those when she felt like she\u2019d written a good sentence \u2013 adding later that these came about every third day.<\/p>\n

Taking a slightly broader perspective, she said that she really enjoyed creating characters and having that slightly God-like control over them. Earlier she\u2019d referred to authors as being \u2018the arch manipulator of everyone\u2019s fate\u2019, saying that this meant that you needed to keep your characters at arm\u2019s length to enable you to do this.<\/p>\n

I find it comforting that she finds it hard to get started again if she stops writing. Although this meant that she started \u2018Big Sky\u2019 the day after she finished \u2018Transcription\u2019, so then I felt like a pathetic failure. She\u2019s currently writing short stories \u2018to keep her hand in\u2019.<\/p>\n

What next?<\/p>\n

Plans include a novel set in the sixties and another set in the 18th century. She said that she enjoyed bringing the past to life so that people could see that it was just the same as the present. \u2018I have a lot of novels I want to write; I\u2019m going to have to live for a long time,\u2019 she said. I\u2019d call that very good news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the highlights of the Capital Crime festival for me was the conversation between Kate Atkinson and Jake Kerridge. I have been a fan of Kate Atkinson since \u2018Behind the Scenes at the Museum\u2019. I loved her literary fiction and was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[84,87,86,75,92,50,52],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":538,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions\/538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lynnfraser.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}