Welcome to the third instalment of the RM Gurnhill blog!
If you'd like to know more about myself or my work, please don't hesitate to contact me through the contact form on the site.
Questions posed by Paul Grant & Zak Peat
Pencil drawing by Jo Lanta
Q: What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
What an amazing question! I have no answer to this! Writing quirk as in when writing? Perhaps my dependency on word-processing everything direct from my mind to the screen. I never, ever write text out first. Ever. Notes, yes. Research, yes. Ideas, yes. But when writing prose for example, I sit and think, then start typing. And type. That's it. I work the words out as I go and leave the changes and alterations to the editing process. One major quirk I have, and from the author’s I’ve read interviews with it seems I’m not alone in this, is conversations and interactions between characters. I design my characters before writing, getting to know them inside out before I write them. Then, for example, if a scene requires two characters, I just write the introduction and set the scene, and the characters take over - I write nothing. Oh, the words may come from my fingers, but the characters inside my head are writing them, not me. This has taken scenes in some incredibly diverse directions even I couldn't have imagined, believe me!
Q: Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?
My eyes, ears, other senses and experience. That may sound twee, but absolutely everything and anything can be turned into a poem, song, novel - you name it. Remember the poem about Daffodils? And what the hell was Wonderwall all about? Exactly.
Q: What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?
Bizarrely enough, as I mentioned earlier, it's that my books write themselves. I put all the work into the plot, characters and threads of narrative before I even begin to type. I know the ideas inside out before writing the actual text, so I begin to type and see where the characters and story take me. That's not to say it's all free-form and winging it - it's not. I have a structure and a 'road map' of the chapters before I start, then I follow the route I planned out. Characters take on a life of their own though once out of the imagination and onto the page, and regularly write their own dialogue through me. I suppose you'd have to be a fellow writer to understand what I seem to be waffling about!
The final part of this question and answer session coming soon.
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