Michael Robotham
How I write...
It's tough. It's like pulling teeth. It's like juggling hand grenades. Believe me, there is nothing more frightening than the blank screen or as dangerous as a laptop with a Sony battery (this sucker could blow at any time).
If you must know, I write while dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, sitting at an outdoor café at a Sydney beach, having ordered poached eggs and a latte for breakfast. I write longhand in bound notebooks, scrawling completely unintelligible sentences that have to be transferred to the computer within hours or I'll never be able to read my handwriting again.
I write longhand to protect my eyes from the computer screen and because there is something about pen and paper that leads to shorter sentences and sharper dialogue. Watching me write is not a spectator sport. Nobody queues up to see it. I'm the weird guy in the corner table who has conversations with himself.
A final observation on writing - a friend visited James Joyce one day and found the great man in despair. "James, what's wrong?" he asked, "Is it the work?"
"Of course, it's the work." Joyce replied.
"How many words did you write today?" the friend asked.
Joyce said, "Seven."
"Seven? But James, that's a good number for you."
"Yes," said Joyce, finally looking up, "But I don't know what order they go in."
Michael Robotham's new novel Shatter is published by Little Brown UK at $32.99.