Photograph:
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James Patterson
Sundays at Tiffany's
When did you start writing fiction?
In 1971 while I was in college, I worked in a mental institution outside of
Cambridge, Massachusetts. I became a voracious reader during this period
and just loved what I was reading. I began scribbling back then, and my first
novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, was published five years later in
1976.
How do you develop storylines and ideas for your novels?
Every once in a while somebody will criticize one of the Cross books and
say it was not very realistic. That leads me to think of someone looking at a
Picasso or a Chagall and saying, "It's not very realistic." I don't think the
painters were going for realism. The books I write are not about realism;
they're about nightmares, not literal nightmares, but nightmares I feel about
the world.
When you're working on one of your novels, do you have a set of
routines or rituals you follow or go through?
I have an evolved series of routines. It's interesting, when I was watching
the filming of the movie "Kiss the Girls", one of the things that struck me
about Morgan Freeman is the confidence that he has as an actor. He's just
so confident.
Over the years, at least with respect to thrillers, I've become very confident.
I know that somehow I'm going to get it right, that somehow the ending is
going to come to me. I guess a little of that is, yes, I have developed some
rituals.
How long does it take you to write a book start to finish?
About a year, it depends, it might be a little less, it might be a little more.
How was your first book, The Thomas Berryman Number, published? What was the process you went through?
I sent it to one publisher, and they held it for seven months, which at first I
thought was sort of hopeful, but then they turned it down. Then I read in the
New York Times about an agent who had taken on some first-time writers. I
sent the manuscript over to him, and two days later he called back. My first
thought was, he's rejecting the book already, but he said "No, no, no, come
on over, I loved it."
So he decided to represent the book which was turned down initially by
twenty-six publishers before Little, Brown bought it and published it.
Eventually the book went on to win the Edgar Award that year for Best First
Mystery, so go figure.
Would you like to be more involved in the process of adapting the
book to film?
That's a tough one. I wouldn't mind doing a movie if you could have a very
small group of people who were very good and had reasonable freedom. In
terms of getting involved with three agents for that actor, four agents for
that actor, lawyers, studio people, studio line producers. There are so many
people, I don't know if that would be my cup of tea personally.
Will you tell us a little bit about the editing process you go through?
One of the things I'll do when I submit a manuscript is ask the editor to send
me her notes and criticisms before we have a face to face meeting about the
book. This allows me time to read them over, get really angry at the editor
for being so insensitive and missing everything. Slowly over the next 24
hours, I'll start to think "Well, that was a good point, and that was a good
point," and along the way you get to be more objective about it. But some
of the things I'll look at and say, "That's true. That may not be the solution,
but the criticism is valid. And I find it really useful to get the criticism and
then decide over time which part of it is valid, and which parts can be
incorporated to make a better book.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Every once in a while someone asks me, "Can you give me any ideas on
writing or how I may write a better book?" One of the suggestions I make is
to take the best story you have, that you know works for you when you tell
it, and write it down. Chances are it has a really good beginning, a really
good ending, and you've weeded out all of the extraneous stuff. The detail
that you have is really relevant to the story and makes it work better. For
the kind of writing that I do, that's how I do it. I don't want the extraneous
stuff, I just want to mainline to the heart of story.
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