Our latest Writers’ Project interview just launched!
This time, we spoke with bestselling suspense author Jeff Abbott, who told us about his life, his writing routines, and his new book, Adrenaline.
You can read the interview at the Writers’ Project website. And if you missed our last interview, with Damon Young, be sure to check it out in the archives.
Exciting news this morning: We’ve just launched a new feature on the website of our parent company, Exaclair, to celebrate writing, creativity, and the tools and minds that make it all possible.
Called the Writers’ Project, it includes interviews with authors from around the world who share tips and techniques and talk about their latest projects. Australian author Damon Young is our inaugural feature; visit the Writers’ Project homepage to learn more about Damon’s writing habits, his new book, Distraction, and the “tangible, intimate quality to the marriage of pen, ink and paper.”
Agatha Christie, disorganized writer — who knew? According to an article on Slate, a newly discovered stash of notebooks reveals the “utter derangement” in her method:
Her less-than-refined writerly day began with finding her notebook, which surely she’d left right there. Then, having found a notebook (not the one she’d used yesterday), and staring in stunned amazement at the illegible chicken scratchings therein, she would finally settle down to jab at elusive characters and oil creaky plots.
At any one time, Christie would have half a dozen notebooks going … [her] promiscuous note-taking meant that any one novel or play might be distributed over multiple notebooks and many, many years.
To learn more about the notebooks, check out John Curran’s newly published book, Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making.
Image via.
Photo by Daniel Azarian
Tell us a bit about yourself — where are you from, where do you live, and when did you start writing?
I live in Philadelphia, in a small village just outside the city, so I have the best of both worlds. I know some of my family lived here in the early 1800s and after a brief foray into Ohio, we returned.
I’ve been writing all my life. I have a copy of my first story, “The Tiny Party,” about a fairy named Flash who told her sister Tiny to arrange a birthday party for her. Tiny did so, and invited Jane, Mary, Sally and Bubble. There was a chocolate cake with white icing and pink candies. Flash collected birthday loot of flowers, ribbons and socks. At another time I will tell you about The Fairy Wedding, when Glisen got married and Bubble played the organ. These exciting tales are written in pencil on yellow tablet paper. No idea of Clairefontaine paper and Herbin inks then! As I grew up, I whipped off a poem for every event, some of which my mother saved for me. There was never any question in my mind that the main purpose of life was to write about it.
When and how did you get into fountain pens and ink? Do you have a favorite pen or ink, either generally or for specific purposes?
I got my first fountain pen, a Waterman which I still use, when I was in my early twenties, a gift from my husband. I’ve been passionate about inks for about five years but I’m a lifelong diarist and I’ve collected notebooks all my life. Recently I discovered the colony of those who love pens, inks, and notebooks on the internet, where I spend happy hours reading reviews of inks and comparing colors.
A favorite color, no. Not just one. I keep a dozen or so pens in an old moosehead cream jug beside my favorite chair, where I have my morning coffee and start writing. Poets sometimes speak about the duende, invisible spirits who bring us writing. I think they help me choose which pen and ink is right for the day or for a particular task. I tend to keep a special pen for each color, as much as I can. For example, I have Herbin Vert Olive in a vintage green marbleized Shaeffer with gold accents. I might put another green in that pen but never another color. I just realized — this sounds a trifle obsessive, doesn’t it? My blues go in a blue Cavalier Pilot, my favorite just now. I write very small so I like fine or very fine nibs and these Cavaliers are very smooth. Karen Doherty (your colleague, I know) just very graciously gave me some Rose Cyclamen, which I lovelovelove. I bought a special pen for it, a silvery-pink Cavalier.
Can you tell us a little more about “Les Encres de Monsieur Herbin”?
As readers of this blog already know, Jeff Abbott, bestselling author of suspense titles Panic and Fear, uses Clairefontaine notebooks to sketch out his works in progress. Here, Jeff answers a couple questions about his methodology.
On your blog, you mentioned that you use notebooks to keep track of ideas that occur to you while writing, to sketch scenes, outline plot points, and so on… is this something you do systematically, or just whenever inspiration strikes? Do you organize your notebooks according to project (i.e., a specific novel or screenplay) or by theme (characters, research, plots)?
Each novel starts in its own Clairefontaine notebook, and serves as a catchall for ideas as they come to me. I don’t try to organize it overmuch (with separate sections for characters, plot points, etc.), except I do keep a running list of research issues and questions. If I do need a separate section I mark it with a durable index tab from Post-It. Those are easily labeled and removed when I don’t need them any more. But pretty much, ideas get written into the notebook as they come to me. So one page might be the initial sketch for a character’s background, and the next might be an idea for a scene that involves a different character. That’s okay. This approach provides a map or diary to see how the book evolved. For other projects that aren’t books, I keep a small pocket notebook with me all the time, and notes about those ideas, or any ideas non-book-related go in there. If an idea evolves into a bigger project (such as writing a film treatment for a studio), then the project graduates to its own Clairefontaine notebook. I label the front of each notebook so I know what’s covered inside at a glance. Right now I have active notebooks for the new novel I’m writing, one for short stories, and for a film project I’m involved with.
I don’t want to “overorganize” the notebooks—there is a lot of value in flipping through the pages, revisiting ideas as the book evolves, and seeing what I originally planned and how the book turned out.
We may have to start a regular series on writers over here… Thanks to Biffybeans’s sleuthing, we just found out that Susan Jane Gilman (author, most recently, of the memoir Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven), uses Clairefontaine notebooks:
For whatever it’s worth, my “drugs” of choice these days are great little French bound notebooks with lined graph paper (see www.clairefontaine.com) and omniBall rollerball pens. For special occasions, like book signings, I’ve got two Waterman pens—a black fountain pen and a red rollerball.
Glad you like ‘em, Susan!
Our friend Jeff Abbott, bestselling author of suspense titles Panic and Fear, has more advice for writers who want to manage their creations through notebooks and paper planners.
Jeff currently uses a Filofax A5 to complement his Clairefontaine notebooks, though he describes two other brands that he likes (Moleskine and yours truly!), pointing out:
The good thing about changing paper planners is that while not necessarily cheap, it’s not nearly as expensive as changing a PDA or smartphone.
For more tips, check out the “Organized Writer” series on Jeff’s blog!
Jeff Abbott, bestselling author of suspense titles Panic and Fear, drew our attention to one of his recent blog posts—turns out he uses Clairefontaine notebooks to sketch out his works in progress!
“My assistant orders them for me in stacks of five so I never have to worry about running out,” he explained.
What does he like about them?
The difference is the paper. If I am spending literally hours with a notebook, I want the paper to be strong and also to hold the ink well, whether I’m using a gel pen or a fountain pen. I want the notebook to be tough and handle weeks of abuse as it gets carted around from my studio to my bedside to my briefcase.
Read more at jeffabbott.com…
