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Author
Interviews Interview: Josie
Lloyd & Emlyn Rees Their
third co-written book, The Boy Next Door,
has hit the street and received plenty of
praise. We gained an insight into what
makes the couple work well as a
team... Fiction-Net:
Have you found that since becoming
parents, you've found less time to
write? Josie
& Emlyn: When we first started
writing together, it was great not only to
have the sudden luxury of being able to
work from home, but also to be able to do
that work whenever we felt the urge. All
we had to do was take the phone off the
hook and the necessary peace and quiet was
ours. Some days we'd work eighteen hours
and some days (usually the sunny ones!) we
wouldn't even get as far as switching our
computers on. However, now that our
daughter, Tallulah, has landed - and is
becoming more vocal and mobile by the day
- we've both been thrown into the weird
situation of occasionally craving an
office to head off to just to get some
work done. But we don't, so instead, our
writing habits have altered radically,
become baby-centric to an alarming degree.
When she sleeps, in other words, we work -
i.e. maybe not as often as we should! We
still get the hours in, then, but just not
where we might have chosen them
before. Fiction-Net:
Did you find it easy to break away
from the characters of your previous two
novels (Come Together and Come Again) and
move onto Fred and Mickey? Josie
& Emlyn: As much as we enjoyed
writing both Come Together and Come Again,
we felt that we'd explored Jack and Amy
and all their friends in such detail that
we were ready for a change. Moving on to
Mickey and Fred was therefore quite a
liberating experience for us. On a
personal note, we also felt it would have
been a bit fraudulent to carry on writing
about clubbing and living the single life
when our own lives had undergone such a
massive upheaval (see above!). If you're
writing that kind of thing, if it's not
authentic, it doesn't work. Fiction-Net:
It's really difficult for the reader
to know if Fred and Mickey will get it
together again. Was this a key aim for
you? Josie
& Emlyn: When we started writing
The Boy Next Door, our intention was to
write a wistful romantic comedy set
against a backdrop of Seventies, Eighties
and Nineties pop culture. The idea was to
have these two kids growing up next door
to one another in a tiny village and then
heading out into the big wide world. We
wanted it to be obvious that they were
meant for one another, if only they could
see it themselves - kind of an extended
When Harry Met Sally. However, when we
started writing it, we realized that if
the two main characters didn't get it
together for thirty years, it would get
very boring. Where were the stakes?!? Why
couldn't they see what everyone else
could?!? Were they really suited at all!?!
We therefore scrapped what we were doing
and had a re-think, hitting on the idea
telling two love stories about Mickey and
Fred, one from their teens and one from
their twenties, one with a happy ending
and one without. The aim was for both the
back story and the present day story to
have equal impact and tension, keeping
everyone guessing until the
end... Fiction-Net:
Will your next project be co-written
or are you sick of each other
yet? Josie
& Emlyn: We're certainly not sick
of each other and we're still delighted to
have the opportunity of working together.
We'll be starting a new novel later this
year. We both want to make sure we're
stretched and stimulated by what we write,
so we're always thinking up new ideas and
ways of working. Fiction-Net:
How well do you respond if one of you
criticises the other's writing? Josie
& Emlyn: Working in a partnership
makes you much less precious about your
own work. At the end of the day, we have
both our names on the book and we've both
got to be proud of it. It's a joint
effort, but that doesn't mean it has to be
a compromise. On the contrary, working
together means that we try and show off to
each other. We have a rule that we have to
make our writing as polished as possible
before we show it to the other person.
Generally, we try to be as constructive as
possible when it comes to criticism. Most
problems only occur when there's been a
lack of planning.
Fiction-Net:
Do you plan out the full plot in
advance before putting pen to paper, or do
you find the story changes as you
write? Josie
& Emlyn: The more we write
together, the clearer it becomes that good
planning is essential. We threw out 50,000
words (one hundred and fifty manuscript
pages - aargh!) of The Boy Next Door half
way through writing, when we realized that
we could write a much better story. Taking
those kinds of decisions is very painful
and it's best to avoid them at all costs.
Every writer has a different process, but
for us, from now on, the plan is to work
up a water-tight plot before we
start.
Fiction-Net:
What was the last book you
read? Josie
Lloyd: C is for Cancer, by John
Diamond. Emlyn
Rees: Sheepshagger by Niall Griffiths
and The Seinfeld Scripts Fiction-Net:
Finally, now that you've got a few
successful novels under your belts, did
you still get an excited buzz when TBND
hit the shelves? Josie
& Emlyn: Our friends and family
seem to have accepted that writing novels
is our job, so for them there wasn't as
much excitement as there has been in the
past. For us, though, having a novel
published and seeing it out there in the
shops is still a huge buzz, terrifying and
exciting at the same time. It's out there,
ready to sink or swim, and there's not a
thing you can do about it, except hope
that people like it. In the meantime, the
very fact that it is now in the shops
means - guess what? - it's time to switch
off that TV and Playstation and get on
with writing the next one. And that's what
we're heading off to do. Right now.
Honest, guv... |
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