Q&A with author Chad Taylor

Chad Taylor in London.

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What are you working on?

I've just finished the new novel, Tijuana Bible, which is noir, very hard-boiled; I've also been working on some crime short stories about a debt collector named Huxley and a story about a screenwriter working in LA.

How similar or different are your new books to previous ones, and in what ways?

The Huxley stories are very New Zild. Tijuana Bible is likely to cause offence. The screenwriter story is strange. They're all out on a limb, which is not what publishers want at the moment.

How do you like the rest of being a writer – dealing with publishers, media, festivals, reviews?

Being a writer requires honesty, introspection and the ability to work in total solitude. Dealing with publishers, media and festivals requires the exact opposite: social, political and business skills. Going from one mode to the other is like shifting from fifth gear to reverse. I say "fifth gear" because true creativity is high-revving and continental and it breaks down a lot.

What is your favourite aspect of writing? Least favourite?

My favourite part of writing is where I am now, which is two-thirds of the way through the story with the end in sight. Before then the manuscript is a mess; afterwards it's just another book. But in the twilight, it's magical.

What's your writing process?

I prefer to keep studio hours, which is 9am-1pm every day. I'm living in London at the moment so I get up, throw my laptop in a bag and walk up to the writer-friendly Russian cafe on Kentish Town Road where I type for three hours and two coffees. When I am concentrating I can block out pretty much everything but I miss having a room to write in. At night I spend a couple of hours reading over what I've written, making notes and generally worrying about it. I try and take the weekends off but usually don't. My writing process begins with six or eight months of careful planning which I then discard, return to and finally throw out again. Then I hate myself for about a year, nurture resentment of my circumstances, abuse myself and others, create a genuine distraction, fall into massive debt and finally return to working on the thing I originally planned. In seriousness, you get it right first time and spend two years testing it. Your reward for losing your way is to witness the original form developing with conviction. I keep many notebooks with a psycho-killer level of detail, but when the manuscript begins to take shape I stay mostly on the laptop. I rewrite more than anyone could imagine, except perhaps another writer.

What do you think creative writing courses can teach?

How to be popular. They teach you how to negotiate a creative group dynamic, how to think defensively about your work and how to value yourself in an academic context. These skills will give you an advantage in dealing with the group activities of writing: publishers, media, festivals and reviews. A tutor's quick nip and tuck can also make you appear better than you are. The writing however is still up to you. Punk.

What do you read, and who has influenced your writing?

I read anything that falls under my eye. At the moment I prefer genre fiction because the themes and techniques of literature have been reverse-engineered into sentimental, middlebrow filler. I'm also reading a lot of historical non-fiction.

Other interests?

I have way too few other interests. I'm lucky to be able to write and feel that anything that takes me away from it is abusing the privilege. In reality I am more fun than that, especially if you catch me in the hating myself / seeking distraction period.

What's next?

I'm watching the operatic version of Electric taking shape. I'm not personally involved. The music is being composed by Warwick Blair and will involve some very talented people. I've heard some demo tracks and they're incredible. He's deconstructed the novel to create this amazing music. It's going to be good.

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