Austin ~ Austen

I tend to have a fairly loose approach to plotting in that I know kind of what I am doing, but it’s the kind of what you’re doing if you know you’re starting out in Seattle, and you’re going drive to New York, in an old car, and where you’re probably going to stop on the way, but you don’t know everything that’s going to happen, you don’t know where the car’s going to die on you, and you don’t know what’s going to happen with that hitchhiker. And so you try to put that stuff in and that makes it interesting.
With Anansi Boys it went great making up with a sort of general plan until I got half way through and then something unexpected happened and I stopped for four months. Either I could throw out those last two pages in which something really interesting but unexpected happened that shocked even me or I could keep them and keep going but then everything had to change, it had to get deeper and darker and I liked the idea of the latter but it took four months of walking around, walking into walls, and having the kind of conversations with my assistant where she’d come over and say “I’ve put a cup of tea in front of you.” and I’d go “Great.” All of my head was off somewhere figuring it all out.