Ian Rankin has confessed that his writing speed is “slowing down” and attributed it partly to the demands made on authors to promote themselves on social media.
Britain’s most popular crime novelist, who created the Inspector Rebus series, said writers had to spread themselves “a lot thinner” to maintain high public profiles.
Rankin, 57, who published his first Rebus novel in 1987, retreats to Cromarty, in northeast Scotland, when “panic sets in” as a deadline approaches.
“There is no wifi, no mobile phone signal, no telephone, no TV and I just start writing,” he told the Hay Festival. “I am slowing down . . . and I am not the only writer finding this. After a couple of pages I am knackered and I have to take a break, have a cup of tea, do the crossword and try again.”
He used to be able to submit two novels a year, writing between 15 and 20 pages a day, but a “good day” now would be six pages.
Advertisement
“Part of the problem might be that . . . we are being asked to do social media, we are being asked to go on tour, to do Facebook pages, Q&As, more interviews, invited on to radio programmes and TV documentaries. The notion of locking yourself away and writing all day has pretty much gone.”
The explosion in the number of literary festivals — and publishers’ insistence that writers attend — had eaten dramatically into writing time. Rankin said that if he was given 12 months to deliver a book, the first six would largely be taken up promoting his previous novel.
He said, however, that “compared to literary novelists I think I still put in a fair day’s work”, adding: “I won’t get away with saying it will take me ten years to write a book. Ten years? Nine years in a pub.”
He drew a comparison with the industry of the past when he said publishers were like “gentleman’s clubs” and, if one or two writers were making money, the publisher was happy to carry a stable of writers who did not because “they liked them”.
Rankin also revealed his frustration when his novels are translated into American English. “They take out the local colour, little linguistic things. Fleshmarket Close, they changed to Fleshmarket Alley, because Americans will not understand what a close is.”
Advertisement
The novelist, who has sold more than 20 million Rebus books, said that he would this summer identify the publishers who rejected his first novel. Letters from five companies declining Knots & Crosses will form part of an exhibition celebrating three decades of the Edinburgh detective.
