Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.
Today’s guest for the WHAT is Kate Weinberg, author of The Truants, one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Crime Novels of 2020. Borrowing details from the life and work of Christie as the catalyst for its ingenious plot – in particular her mysterious, 11-day disappearance in 1926 – this scintillating novel begins on an otherwise unglamorous concrete campus in England’s gloomy north and ultimately travels to a remote Italian island where secrets and cloudy motives will lead to unforeseen consequences. The result is not a classic mystery in the Christie school, but rather a literary novel of suspense that explores themes of female friendship, love, deceit, obsession, mentorship, loyalty, art, and death.
Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?
How long have you got?! My book started forming itself about 15 years before it was published. I studied in a famous creative writing programme in Norfolk, England, where my English literature teacher, Professor Lorna Sage, became the inspiration for the Lorna in my book. Although I am quite different from my narrator, Jess, and I pushed her relationship with the Lorna in my book into much deeper, darker corners, the spark for the story was the same: I was that student, longing for a mentor and romance, desperate for an intellectual and emotional wake-up that would lay the path for an extraordinary life.
Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?
With a huge amount of trial and error! It was like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube. I knew some of the characters I wanted (Lorna, Jess, and a love interest); I knew the themes I wanted to tackle – wanting to vanish from your old life and be seen afresh in a new one – and I knew I wanted a murder mystery element because I’ve always loved books with a taut, suspense element. So I was constantly adding and then rebalancing between character and story. I feel like if you could make a cross-section of the process of The Truants you’d find as many layers as you’d have in a thick pastry!
Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?
With me, it’s more the other way round: I don’t have the plot firmly in place before I get to the writing stage. I have a real sense of characters, themes and a loose sense of the story, and then as I write I have to fix the story.
Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?
Plenty of ideas come, but not many stick around. I find one of the most rewarding things as a writer is to excavate old ideas – which have never come to anything – and realise that I can now see a way to making them come alive.
How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?
I’m a slow writer, so I don’t have that problem. I’m now working on a second book which has even more autobiographical roots than the first one, so I always knew I wanted to write it. I just feel now that I am ready.
I have 5 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?
It depends what stage I’m at. If I am in the first draft I find it really helpful to have another body in the room, and to have set up a structure for a day, with breaks: it stops me procrastinating and seeking out company and connection (annoyingly I am not solitary, or disciplined by nature.) But if I am into one of the last drafts and I have momentum I’m better off working by myself. I can write deep into the night, and when its flowing like that, I never feel lonely.