The Writing Process: Lee Child

I am quite a big fan of Lee Child's Jack Reacher series of novels. They have got nothing to do with SFF (they are more action adventure crossed with police procedural). But as they are genre fiction of a different sort, and as Child is a wildly successful author, a recent article in the New York Times entitled The Professor on Lee Child’s Shoulder that describes Child's writing process should be of interest to fans of any genre.

The genesis for the article is that Andy Martin, a fan and academic critic of Child, approached Child about following him as he wrote his 20th novel in the series, Make Me. Martin then wrote about the experience in Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me. The Times article reports on a conversation between Martin and Child.

According to the interview, Child approached this as a form of real time literary criticism. As Child says:

Here is the fundamental reality about the writing business. It’s lonely. You spend all your time writing and then wondering whether what you just wrote is any good. You gave me instant feedback. If I write a nicely balanced four-word sentence with good rhythm and cadence, most critics will skip right over it. You not only notice it, you go and write a couple of chapters about it. I liked the chance to discuss stuff that most people never think about. It’s weird and picayune, but obviously of burning interest to me.

Martin says he was struck by how much of Child's surroundings made it into the book:

I tried to be a kind of white-coated detached observer. But every observer impinges on the thing he is observing. Which would be you in this case. And I noticed that everything around you gets into your texts. You are an opportunistic writer. For example, one day the maid was bumping around in the kitchen and in the next line you used the word “bucket.” Another time there was some construction work going on nearby and the next verb you used was “nail.” We go to a bookstore and suddenly there is Reacher, in a bookstore.

Child appears to be a "seat of the pants" writer. As Martin says:

That was the thing that drew me in: You never knew in advance what you were going to be writing about. It was a real tabula rasa. You really were making it up as you went along. I can certify that. I remember what you said when we started off down this road. “I have no plot and no title.” No plan, no notes, no synopsis.

while Child describes the change in his process, necessitated by having an observer, as being his primary interest:

Normally I operate in a fog of instinct. I wondered if being required to explain as I went along might actually be more illuminating for me than you.

Indeed, Child seems to have gotten used to bouncing ideas off Martin. The reported conversation begins with Child telling Martin the first sentence of his next novel, apparently titled Night School:

“In the morning they gave Reacher a medal, in the afternoon they sent him back to school.” The first sentence of “Night School.”

In response:

MARTIN Eleven syllables, each side of the caesura. Diminished alexandrine. Nicely symmetrical. And that rhythm. Like a limerick. Did you know you were doing that? 

CHILD See, I’ll miss all that.

Overall, a fascinating insight into the mind and process of a very successful writer.