Edited version published in Dreamwatch, Issue 144, September 2006
How long did it take to write Vellum?
All in, it took about ten years of writing, but for the most part of that, to be honest, I didn’t actually realise I was writing the book. It started out as a bunch of short stories and novellas with shared characters and ideas, overlapping backgrounds and themes; and those only gradually came together into the big story arc of The Book of All Hours… which then, in turn, split apart into the two novels, Vellum and Ink.
How would you describe your writing?
In terms of the end result, I think it can come across as superficially chaotic. Vellum is a non-linear, multi-threaded narrative, with chapters fragmented into titled sections and those sections broken apart into “panels”… like the way a comic has pages and panels, I suppose, or the way a film has scenes and shots. Because the action often flicks this way and that between sections, with the story taking place across various realities in a sort of Moorcockian multiverse, a lot of readers might feel that it’s all about the style of the writing and the characters, they might think I’m not interested in plot. But if you look deeper you should find that it’s more complexity than chaos. I’m actually quite obsessive about structure. Although it’s told in a sort of crazy-paving of fragments Vellum is all about characters getting bound into a story, trying to escape the lives, the plots, they’re locked into.
Have you been surprised by the reaction to Vellum?
Yes and no. There’s a part of me that’s vain enough, or proud enough of the book, to have blithely expected the praise. That part is utterly baffled at how anyone can not love the book. Why, you do not understand the genius that is me! But there’s another part of me that’s critical enough, or realistic enough, to know that this crazy-ass Cubist monster of a book is going to really piss some readers off, a part that expects hostility and contempt; and that part is totally shocked whenever someone tells me they loved it. What, you mean I’m not a self-deluding nut-job after all?
Really, I always suspected Vellum would be a “love it or loathe it” book, that it would kick off extreme reactions, both positive and negative. What’s been most surprising, perhaps, is that the praise and hostility hasn’t mapped to any artificial “intellectual” versus “commercial” divide. I’ve always felt that there’s no reason a serious and complex book, a book you might need to reread to really “get”, can’t work equally well as a ripping yarn you can enjoy on the first reading; but it’s not an easy task to set yourself, so it’s gratifying — and surprising — to see readers who’ve felt Vellum succeeded on that level, who really aren’t that interested in all my poncy Modernist ambitions but who loved the book for the rollercoaster ride thrills and chills.
After Vellum, did writing Ink feel different?
God, yes. I was halfway through Ink at the point I got the deal with Pan Macmillan, and had to then put it to one side to deal with edits, PR and all the pre- and post-publication palaver around Vellum. By the time I got back to finishing Ink, the buzz around Vellum had taken off. Macmillan had got behind it in a big way. Del Rey had bought it in the US. Foreign publishers were picking up translation rights. There was even a collector craze around the ARCs on eBay. So even apart from the difference between writing a book with no idea if anyone will want to buy it — where you’re under no real pressure at all — and writing a book under contract — where you know people are relying on you to deliver — all that hype really raised the stakes with Ink. It was like the whole “second album syndrome” around bands whose first record is a hit. Suddenly there’s a whole lot of people with a whole lot of expectations, all of them watching you.
Totally unreal and totally natural. Scary as fuck and fucking sweet. Man, how doesn’t it feel? I always knew I’d make it, and I never in a million years thought I’d make it. I thought it was a total pipe-dream, and I was convinced it was just a matter of time. I mean, I’m totally schizoid about the whole thing. You’ve got to be, I reckon; you’ve got to have total faith in yourself, yet at the same time know that you don’t have a rat’s chance. So walking into Worldcon on 2005 as a published author it was with a mix of cocky pride and incredulity. Hey, of course I made it. Man, I fucking made it?!
© paulfcockburn
