Monday Methods : Alec McQuay

Alec’s book ‘Emily Nation’ is officially released in paperback TODAY! Post apolcayptic Cornwall, an alcoholic assassin, a mysterious benefactor…

emily nation

Now here is Alec with a Monday Method for you all.
Monday methods!

I thought I’d start by summing up my writing environment in one neat little picture. In the background you can see what I like to call organised chaos, but what everyone else at work thinks of as an unholy mess. They’d probably be right, and if I had to submit a metaphorical picture of the inside of my brain, a big heap of bits of paper, probably teetering on the verge of falling over and crushing me to death, would about do it. I’m not the organised kind in anything that I do. You want a wedding planned for next June amidst the softly swaying trees of rural Pembrokeshire? Nope, can’t help you. Oh, the shit just hit the fan, the doves are attacking the guests, the priest is stuck at the bottom of a well, the venue (a busy roundabout) is on fire and you have to get married within the hour or you’ll turn back into an ornamental bedside lamp? Well hold on to your fucking petticoats,  you’ve come to the right place…

teaalec

I’ve got a full time job, two kids, three cats, a dog and more hobbies than I can shake a stick at, and I still find the time to write. That doesn’t make me special though, if you ever find yourself at a convention (try Edge Lit in Derby, tis a good ‘un) you’ll find out this is quite close to the norm. We all have our ways of getting it done, and this is mine. It’s all about controlling my environment, and the way I do that is really simple. I stay up really late when everyone else is sleeping, pour myself a huge brew the colour of Black Beard’s shaded parts, crank up the tunes to FUCK YOU, EARDRUMS! type levels and get typing. A lot of people can’t write to music; personally I find it’s best to avoid anything you’d normally sing along to, avoid rap as the music is heavily dependent on the words and, for preference, opt for a band with a vocalist whose indecipherable singing you can’t understand anyway. Keeps the distractions to a minimum, but you can still stop to shred an air-guitar solo every now and then. That’s a given. There’s no-one around, I can’t hear anything that I didn’t put there to be heard and the whole world is kept at arm’s length while I try and turn the internal chaos into something resembling a story.

Sometimes it actually works.