How to begin? That’s the kind of question you find yourself asking after being engrossed in 302 pages on the painstaking process of writing a bestseller.
This book starts with an email. Cambridge academic Andy Martin writes to Lee Child and asks if he can watch him write the 20th Jack Reacher thriller, Make Me, and thus provide an insight into a series of novels that have turned Reacher into a worldwide phenomenon. While Reacher Said Nothing doesn’t quite match their narrative suspense, its combination of literary criticism, fandom and simple observation make it gripping.
Child begins each new book on 1st September, the date he began the first one—a ritual he has to fulfil. He starts with nothing, and allows the emerging plot to surprise him, subsisting on a diet of cigarettes and sugar. Martin buzzes around him, like an annoying child, sitting at his shoulder as he types with two fingers. His analysis (there’s a lot of talk about Roland Barthes and the Flaubertian point of view) can be irritating, but his questions prompt real insights into the nitty-gritty act of writing.
Child, a compelling mixture of arrogance and charm, claims to have no rules except “You should write the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast.” As you watch him grapple with the business of letting the story build with just the right rhythm, thinking hard about every word, it’s hard not to feel real admiration. Fascinating.
