When the going gets tough...

[John Dean]

I am currently working on the latest DCI Jack Harris novel and, with 44,000 words already written, I am deep into a series of emotional scenes as people confront the destruction of their dreams.

ndeed, a theme of the novel is the different way that people confront tough realities. The result is that I am creating scenes full of raw emotion and human frailty.

That means that, like many writers, I am drawing on real life experiences. For me, it’s the only way to do it. Writers who have gone through tough times – and which of us hasn’t? – can bring a sense of reality to their writing.

When I was writing my first novels as a teenager, I tended to write about aliens and war zones and my father’s constant mantra was ‘write about what you know’.

They were wise words - wise words now, wise words then - but the problem was that I did not know anything. I was a schoolboy, what could I know?

Now, on the rapid slide towards sixty, I know so much. Too much in many ways. I know what deep personal loss feels like, know what it is like to see loved ones suffer, know what it feels like to see dreams crumble. That’s what life does to you while you are making plans, as they say.

Such experiences may be tough but, boy, do they give you a rich resource to draws on when you are writing.