Margaret Murphy interview

She started writing several novels between the ages of 10 and 17, but after leaving university she got caught up with the treadmill of life and a career as a teacher, and it wasn't until she turned 30 that she started to write again and discovered her desire had not gone away.

Margaret's first novel, Goodnight, My Angel was shortlisted for the First Blood award.

Margaret is now a full time writer and regularly tours the country, giving talks and workshops, in May this year Margaret and other members of the Murder Squad ran a series of talks in Trafford libraries.

The Murder Squad is made up of John Baker, Chaz Brenchley, Ann Cleeves, Martin Edwards, Margaret Murphy, Cath Staincliffe and Stuart Pawson.

Here, Margaret talks toJenni Carroll on her work and what motivates her when writing.

JC: How did you start writing?

MM: I began as a ten-year-old, writing a pastiche of the film noir we watched on TV every Sunday when I was a kid. My teacher liked it, but my family laughed so hard I never again showed anyone anything I'd written until I was thirty, and started writing seriously. Even then, I showed it only to my husband. I hadn't written at all between the ages of eighteen and thirty, so I decided to try a short story. It just kept getting longer, until I realised that in fact I was writing a novel.

JC: How do you plan what your next book is going to be about?

MM: My novels usually start with either an image or a basic premise - for example Darkness Falls began with the premise that a woman who is used to being in authority is placed in a position of absolute powerlessness. From, that, I found the character of Clara Pascal, a high-flying barrister, who is kidnapped and held by a man who won't even tell her why he has abducted her. With other books it's the image of the murder that is the catalyst for the rest: the novel I'm currently working on began with a very vivid image involving the discovery of a body. It came to me while I was sitting in a traffic jam. The planning is the hard bit: because you have to determine what has brought about the situation, and it's often a tortuous process.

JC: Do you ever suffer from writer's block?

MM: I refuse to call it that - it's far too scary a concept! I do sometimes 'get stuck', however. I often find this is because I need to sort out something in my mind; like locational details or the sequence of events, or background research. Once I've done the groundwork, usually things come right of their own accord. Oh - and I have resorted to pub therapy on one or two occasions . . .

JC: Many authors keep a diary of day-to-day events that they draw on when they are writing. Is this a tool you use?

MM: I'm not a conscientious diary keeper, but I do write up things that mean a lot to me - or to get them off my chest! I also keep a folder full of ideas that I might eventually work on for a story. More important to me, creatively, is keeping a notepad and pen next to the bed. Often ideas and sometimes even whole scenes will come to me as I'm drifting off to sleep. Story and plot ideas are as fragile as soap bubbles. If you don't write them down, they pop, and you lose them forever.

JC: How important is it to you to have strong characters in your novels?

MM: I can't get going with a novel until the central characters are well defined in my mind. The fact that my novels are psychological makes character all the more important. I'll even do a sketch of the person, if it helps to bring them to life. I read dialogue aloud, which helps to develop the different voices, their peculiarities of speech etc.

JC: How thrilled were you to have your first novel - Goodnight, My Angel - nominated for the First Blood Award?

MM: I was delighted - it was a very strong short list - including Chris Brookmyer, who won, and Manda Scott. An award nomination gave me a concrete endorsement from disinterested and knowledgeable people (in this case, crime fiction reviewers) that I really could write, and it spurred me to work even harder to improve my skills.

JC: How do you know when you've completed a novel?

MM: The big advantage of a crime novel is that there should be a resolution. Often, but not always, this is when the killer is revealed, so to a degree, the structure tells you when you've finished. What I try to avoid though, is tortuous explanations of how and why at the end of a novel, it's too much of an anti-climax, so I try to work as much explanation as possible into the body of the novel - you can understand the killer's motivation without revealing who the killer is, quite often. And if you lay the right clues, readers are more than capable of slotting the last pieces in for themselves. The climactic scene can be useful here, too, because the revelation can be something the hero or heroine of the novel experiences along with the reader.

JC: The BBC2 programme Scribbling followed four authors through the process of writing a book from start to finish. It was often agonising to watch, how difficult do you find it to write a book, and what do you do when you hit that brick wall?

MM: As I mentioned earlier, the most difficult part for me is the planning stage - I often feel it will never come right. Luckily, my husband is always there to remind me that I said exactly the same thing when I was planning the previous book, which injects some rationalism into the author angst.

JC: What has been your biggest inspiration when writing a book?

MM: Do you mean inspiration for beginning a novel, or inspiration while writing it?

Unlike many of my writer friends, I do read fiction - and crime fiction along with the rest - while I am writing. Reading other people's work provides different ways of seeing the world, technical skills that you can only learn from reading good writers. The old adage 'nothing succeeds like success' is very true: when things are going well, the motivation to keep going is huge. But much of writing is hard graft - keeping going even when the words don't come, slogging through the mire of 'sticky bits', till it comes right again.

JC: What has been your best seller so far, and how long did it take you to write that book?

MM: Darkness Falls. The first draft took about nine months, but it went through three more drafts before it reached publication.

JC: Are the characters based on anyone you know or have met, or are they all figments of your imagination?

MM: Characters are never entirely unique, otherwise we as readers could never identify with them. One character can be an amalgam of many people I've met, known personally, overheard at a restaurant or pub, or read about in a newspaper. On odd occasions I will 'kill off' someone who has really annoyed me, but I doubt my victims would ever recognise themselves - they go through a number of physical changes before I put them in a book and do them in . . .

JC: You work with other authors - the Murder Squad - to promote your work, do you ever read each other's novels?

MM: Yes! I set up Murder Squad, and I invited other writers whose work I admired, and who were in a similar position to myself i.e. needing to do their own marketing and promotion. We are a very diverse group of writers: our novels range from the psychological to police procedural, the series, the female PI etc.; this variety I think is one of our main strengths.

JC: Do you know when you start the novel who the murderer is, or does the murderer reveal him/herself to you as you write the novel?

MM: I'm often unsure until the final chapter. In fact, more than once the person I've suspected all along has been proved to be entirely innocent!

JC: What book are you reading at the moment?

MM: I often read several, because I continue researching as I write: So in fiction, I'm reading At Swim Two Boys, by Jamie O'Neill, I'm dipping into How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain De Botton; he has a witty, engaging style, and makes philosophy accessible as well as fun to read. On the research side, Head Injuries: a practical guide, by Trevor Powell.

JC: What is your favourite book of all time?

MM: Oh, gawd . . . I'd much rather name several: For inventiveness and superb characterisation, Steven King's The Dead Zone; in crime fiction, Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs, was ground-breaking - a truly seminal work - and despite the horrific violence, had a core of decency and humanity which I felt was lacking in his most recent novel, Hannibal. But you asked for one, didn't you? . . . I rarely reread book - I'm a slow reader, and there are so many books I want to read and haven't yet had the time - but one that I do return to is Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. As a child, I very much identified with the character of Jane, and admired her quiet determination and moral courage.

JC: Has being an author changed your life - and what has been the biggest change?

MM: Just a bit. For a start, it's introduced me to a world I'd always aspired to but never realistically thought was open to me - who'd've thought I would actually get paid to daydream? The biggest change is the freedom writing has given me. I meet all kinds of interesting people during the course of my research, I get to structure my own day, working long hours when necessary, taking a day out when I have to - usually to travel to a part of the country I would never normally visit, to do a reading.

JC: When did you decide to make writing your main profession?

MM: Christmas 1997. I was running a dyslexia unit at the time, and the mountains of paperwork were beginning to bury me - as well as stifling my creative energy. I had endless discussions with my husband about it, and finally decided that I would quit my teaching job at Easter 1998 and work freelance as a dyslexia tutor to supplement my earnings as a writer. I also did some tutoring for the Open College of the Arts. Four years later, I'm writing full time.

JC: What do you have to have with you when you write (a glass of wine? a cup of coffee? a favourite picture?) or do you write without aids?

MM: I always do first drafts long hand, on wide rule paper, using a blue medium point Bic biro. Much of creative writing is allowing yourself to daydream, so I also like to have subdued lighting and a few candles to stare at while I daydream the next scene into being. No music, no background noise.

When I'm typing the hand-written notes onto the computer, I have a notebook to one side in case new ideas pop into my head, and occasionally I'll have a cup of coffee. It's a far cry from my childhood image of a cigarette burning in the ashtray and a glass of whisky to hand, but I can't stand cigarette smoke and I simply can't concentrate if I've had a drink . . .

JC: Past Reason was optioned for television. One of my pet hates is when the adaptation strays from the book. Is this something you are concerned about?

MM: No. Writers are always constrained by the form in which they write, whether it's a novel or a screenplay. The constraints of TV or film mean that internal dialogue is, for the most part, not allowed. A second, and very important constraint is time! Even if a novel is adapted as a three-part serial, you're limited to three or four hours of airtime, and most word-for-word audiotapes of my novels are about 10 hours long. Plotlines inevitably disappear. However, the visual strength of TV, and the advantage of having actors interpret dialogue, means that they can say a lot with just a look, or with body language. If an adaptation works as film or TV drama, then it's fine by me. You have to see them as separate works of art.

P.S. The option on Past Reason has now lapsed (a common experience in publishing) so if there are any TV or film producers out there, it would make a really exciting TV drama . . .

JC: Are you working on anything at the moment?

MM: I've just completed Weaving Shadows, the sequel to Darkness Falls, which will be published by Hodder & Stoughton next April. It's the first time I've written a sequel, and I enjoyed taking some of the characters further, showing their development or disintegration as the story unfolded. I am currently working on a stand-alone novel about a doctor who discovers a murder victim and becomes embroiled in the investigation when her partner is appointed to lead the murder inquiry.