About.com: Do you have a regular writing schedule?
Jasper Fforde: I try to get a head start by kicking off the day at 7:30, in order to get a good head of steam to tackle the book. I find that if you concentrate fully and for long periods of time, then it all comes a lot easier -- a bit like getting "on the step" while jet-skiing. Once you get that speed up, then ideas and situations come a lot easier -- full concentration and absorption.
But like most humans I am easily distracted, so if something happens to kick me off the step, then I might not get back into it that morning, and if shopping, eBay, daytime TV or baby daughter require attention in the afternoon, the day can dwindle rapidly into non-productivity. We're currently building an extension to the house, and my new office -- cell, actually -- will be empty except a word-processor, and no phone, no internet, no books, no nothing -- not even a view. I may even insist on being bricked up for six months and fed food through a slot -- now that would make me write books faster!
AC: How do you balance fatherhood and writing?
JF: The same way that any father balances a work and career. There's no difference. Being a writer doesn't mean you have some special dispensation because you're a struggling artiste, thrashing around in the throes of creation -- that's all bullshit and an excuse for bad behavior. Family can be great levelers, too. No matter what anyone says about my writing, good or bad, Dad is still simply Dad, and is dribbled upon, sulked at, cuddled, or a soft touch to borrow a tenner.
AC: You've said that Monty Python was a huge influence on your work. How did you begin to translate that kind of comedy to the page?
JF: Comedy is the linking of disparate ideas to a new and unexpected result. Monty Python taught me that low brow can be mixed with high to a devastating effect (witness the performance of Wuthering Heights by semaphore flags) or that you could be very erudite and well-read, but still have a silly sense of humor. And that's the fun of it. I can use groaning puns, fart gags and textual slapstick right next to some obscure joke about Richard III.
But Monty Python wasn't the only big influence -- I'd have to include the Muppets and most TV sitcoms of the seventies -- and every book I've ever read, and my brother, and on and on and on. A writer is the product of themselves in their time multiplied by their experience.
AC: What's the most important thing you've learned about writing?
JF: The difference between "there" and "their"; not to use the word "majestic"; there is a lot of difference between Joanna and Anthony Trollope; the "U" key gets less wear and tear when writing for the Americans; that a comma can change everything; that prose is like hair, it improves with combing; that there are very few new ideas; that try as I might, I still can't spell "compleltly" the first time; that writing requires concentration and constant self criticism; that it is a lonely profession; that there are people out there who read far more into my books that I ever intended, and then give me credit for it (thank you); the difference between "fewer" and "less"; that there is always someone out there who knows the real meaning of "decimate," irrespective of the meaning I give to it; that readers are fantastically forgiving of dodgy prose as long as you remain entertaining; that the cardinal sin of writing is boring your audience . . . (that's enough, thank you, Jasper)
AC: What are you working on now?
JF: I'm answering these questions. Oh -- you mean book? Right. Here, have a read of the blurb I've been fobbing off my publishers with for the past year:
. . . It is a lush, green, long-depopulated post-apocalyptic Britain. All notion of history has been quietly forgotten, and all that remains are tea and scones, politeness, cricket, queues, sensible haircuts, talk of weather and an almost fanatical devotion to the avoidance of social embarrassment. Governance has been replaced by the all-encompassing RULES, which look suspiciously as thought they have been lifted unchanged from a Private School Rule-book. The nation is strictly run by a network of Prefects, Monitors, Oiks, Swots, Bullies and Snitches, who use the threat of de-merits to keep the population in line.If only it were all that simple.
Hierarchy is established not by position or cash, but by the colour you can see, with the Violets at the top of the chromatic scale, and Reds at the bottom. Below them are the Achromatic Greys -- the hardworking unrepresented drones of the collective. In a small village on the outer fringes of the nation, Eddie Russett is looking for social advancement but instead finds something much more unexpected: a defiant Grey named Jane who has dangerously radical ideas. Together they embark on a journey to discover the dark nature of the Rules -- but they will have to defy the Prefects and overcome everything they once feared: Darkness, Swan attack, lightning, Beigistan and feral subhumans known only as the Riffraff. It won't be easy. They're not allowed past the boundary without first signing the outings-book, and supper is at 7:00PM sharp.
