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Writer's Routine

Random Routine - Crime supremo Mark Billingham likes to get things done whenever he can

Writer's Routine

Dan Simpson

Arts, Hobbies, Books, Leisure

4.9599 Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2021

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week's Random Routine comes from Mark Billingham.


His new book is 'Rabbit Hole', his 4th standalone thriller, which comes after his 15th Tom Thorne novel, the series he's best known for.


Mark joined us back in 2018 to take us through his writing day. Where we chatted about how Mark's writing style and method has changed in the 17-or-so years since he published his first novel 'Sleepyhead', which was later made into a TV show starring David Morrissey. Also, we found out if seeing his hero on the screen affected his view of story-telling too. We also discussed how being a obsessive crime-fiction fan turned him into one of the genre's best, and why the name of this fine podcast gives him the shivers. Flick back in your podcast feed to catch up on the full episode.


You can support the show at patreon.com/writersroutine


@writerspod

writersroutine.com


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of Writers' Routine.

0:12.6

It's the bonus by The Random Routine, the tiny snatch of a writer's working day.

0:18.9

And this week it's Mark Billingham, crime writing Supremo, known for his

0:23.7

Thorn series. He came on back in 2018 now, three years ago. His newest book is Rabbit Hole. In the

0:32.9

original episode, he was on to talk us through writing the 15th Tom Thorne novel, The Killing Habit.

0:39.6

Now, in this, you'll hear the writing routine of the day, and why he doesn't really have one,

0:44.5

and why even the word makes him shudder. Also, he runs us through a little bit of the writing

0:49.8

routine of the year. It's still the routine, so it counts enough to be in this bite-sized

0:53.8

episode.

0:54.9

Now, if you enjoy this, you can always help out with a few dollars a month at patreon.com

0:59.8

forward slash writers routine. Make sure you scroll back as well in your podcast feeds so you can

1:05.0

listen to the episode from back in 2018. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts from, so you

1:10.0

never miss an episode. Make sure you do the

1:11.7

same on Twitter as well. We are at WritersPod over there. And let's get into it with this

1:16.5

week's random routine, a little bit of inspiration for you from Mark Billingham.

1:34.2

Well, I normally sit down right in my office, which is upstairs from where we are right this minute.

1:45.8

I can only kind of write properly at home. I'm terrible. I can't really write on planes and trains and in hotel rooms and stuff. So I normally need to to have my office so I have a big old desk that's covered in all sorts of rubbish and I'm looking out the window at garden

1:52.8

which again is not always advisable because it's very easy to to get distracted you know I sit

1:58.6

down to work and then I go oh look a squirrel a squirrel. Oh, look a woodpecker.

2:01.4

And, you know, and that's without Twitter and emails arriving and stuff.

2:06.0

But I got a lot of stuff around me that I'm comfortable with.

2:09.9

Lots of kind of music memorabilia from some of my favorite artists.

...

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