Keeping Robert B. Parker’s characters alive! An Interview with Reed Farrel Coleman
Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.
A. I have an office in my home with custom-built bookshelves, mementos, awards, posters, etc. It’s the only place I truly feel comfortable writing in, but because I’m committed to two books a year, I have had to learn to write on the road, in airports, and hotel rooms.
Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)
A. It’s all a ritual and it begins with coffee, the paper, doing the crossword puzzle. Then it’s downstairs to my office. I answer my emails and devote 15 minutes max to Facebook. I need absolute silence to write. No music, no noise at all.
Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?
A. Hard for me to know what you don’t know about me. But here are a few things: I watched someone die of a gunshot wound right in front of me when I was 15 years old, I watched General Hospital for 30 years, and I worked in the cargo area at Kennedy airport for 5 years with the cast of Goodfellas.
Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?
A. My most productive time is 7-10:30 in the morning, but I can do work and editing throughout the day.
Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?
A. Procrastination is death for your career. A writer is only a writer when he or she is writing. Thinking isn’t writing, research isn’t writing, doing anything other than writing isn’t writing. Either give yourself a page or word goal for the day. Meet it and feel good about yourself. Don’t meet it and feel guilty or disappointed. It should be like working out. When you miss a day, you feel bad about it.
Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing and for how long?
A. Absolutely. Time vanishes. Sometimes it’s minutes, but hours have passed for me when I’m in the groove.
Part Two of this fascinating Interview : December 19th
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My BLOGS feature INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! October Author, Lisa Jackson. November will be best selling author, Grace Burrowes and in December, Reed Farrel Coleman, contributing writer for Robert B. Parker series
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