Writers' Rituals – Aline Templeton
The Mysterious Writing Habits of the World's Top Crime Writers
Jun 12, 2009
Are writers obsessive-compulsive? Overly superstitious? Or do habits and rituals provide security for writers who never know where the next idea, or the words to write it, will come from?
Searching for clues to the secrets of writing, Suite 101 has an exclusive interview with Scottish crime writer Aline Templeton, whose DI Marjory Fleming series of books is published by Hodder and Stoughton.
Unlike most heroes or heroines of detective fiction Marjory Fleming isn't a dysfunctional loner and an alcoholic with a string of lovers and an attitude problem. She's the woman you would meet if you visited your local police station – a working mother with a good marriage, teenage kids and elderly parents with all the demands that puts on her. Marjory's husband is a farmer which causes serious problems in the first of the series, Cold in the Earth, which was set in Scotland at the time of the Foot and Mouth epidemic which affected cattle and other livestock causing many farmers to lose their herds and be put out of business.
Templeton's books have since gone on to highlight the problems facing rural communities – the loss of the fishing industry, second homeowners buying up local properties, the threat of supermarkets, the influx of immigrant workers.
Aline Templeton explains how she approaches the task of writing a book...
How much research and plotting do you do before you're ready to write a book?
It depends how much I know about the subject I'm dealing with, but usually quite a lot. It's the fun part, before you have to sit down and write the book! My best ever research was going on location with the Scottish television detective series, Taggart, last year to get background for a book featuring a TV crime series shooting an episode in the area.
I was even filmed as an extra, doing the JK Rowling bit at a cafe table scribbling in a notebook, and I got a cheque for £74! I had all my family alerted to watch the episode, warned them not to go out to put on the kettle or preferably even blink in case they missed it, and what happened? I ended up on the cutting-room floor.
What hours do you devote to your writing and what time of day do you prefer to write?
I have to write in the morning, since by the evening my brain turns to mush. I write from 9.30 till 1 usually, with the afternoon for routine revisions, emails and so on. My Dalmatian, Lucy, heads to the study at 9.30 and if I don't appear, comes to look for me!
Do you take breaks, and if so, what do you do during them?
I don't have any breaks during the morning, except for a few minutes when my husband and I emerge from our studies to fetch a cup of coffee, but we drink it at our desks. In the afternoon, Lucy has her walk – very good as thinking time!
Where do you write?
I live in a house built by an astonomer with a balcony and terrace with a view of Edinburgh Castle and the city skyline. I have a very untidy study! The room is south-facing so I get all the sunshine going, and I have a lot of mementos from my travelling, like an Egyptian cat, Chinese lions and a Spanish Don Quixote. There are some modern pictures, a lot of family photos and even a pottery Proctor from my Cambridge days – a little stout figure with a mortar board, to remind me of the times I had to run away from his 'bulldogs' – young college porters who helped him enforce discipline on unruly students!
What do you write with?
I start off scribbling with a black Bic finepoint (has to be) on scrap paper, usually the backs of my page proofs since I'm obsessive about not wasting paper. This will produce a rough draft which I then I put it on to the screen and do the rest of the work there.
...and why is that your preference?
I still feel I can 'hear' better what my characters are saying through the physical act of writing. But having started writing in the days when a 'rewrite' meant exactly that, every word rewritten and retyped, I revel in the freedom the computer gives me to revise.
Describe what you like to keep within arm's reach while you're writing.
My pens, the file where I keep continuity details for the characters in the book, a Thesaurus, a Scots dictionary, Burns poems (Tam MacNee, DI Fleming's sergeant, is a Burns fanatic), handcream, research notebooks and my diary.
Describe the things you can see when you look up from your writing.
A pot of pens, most of which I never use but which seem to be breeding quietly. A Tiffany box which is full of scraps of paper with rough ideas jotted down on them (I tip them out when I'm thinking about a new book and see what I've got). A box of tissues. A Bible. A mouse mat and a coaster with photos of my two granddaughters. A New Yorker day-to-day calendar which my daughter always gives me so I have a smile to start the day.
What was the first thing you wrote which was published?
A short story for children in, I think, "Jackie" or possibly "Bunty." Like hundreds of Scots writers, my first pay check was from DC Thomson!
What is your latest book?
Dead in the Water, the fifth in the DI Fleming series. She is asked to review a cold case in which her dead father, also a policeman, was involved and finds herself also investigating the murder of an immigrant worker..
Aline Templeton was born in Dunfermline in Scotland, but shortly afterwards moved to the beautiful fishing village of Anstruther in the East Neuk of Fife, and now lives in Edinburgh.
Find out more about Aline and her books from her website
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