Q & A with C.L. Janet

What kind of stories do you write?

I write crime and mystery fiction all set around the Perthshire countryside. The first novel, The Killing Shed, is set in Kinloch Rannoch. It centres around the frailties of the female protagonist, Dr Chrissy Ferguson, a Forensic Psychologist struggling to make sense of memories buried deep in her head. For the second novel I moved closer to home. Chrissy is back in Cargill’s Leap set in Blairgowrie. The third novel should hit the shops around October this year and will be set in Dunkeld. I love to create interesting characters whose actions are shaped by the complexities of their lives and experience. I especially love writing about the darker side of humanity. There are a lot of ways to be bad!

What made you want to write?

Loss. Three years ago, I lost my mum. It was completely unexpected. She was here one day and gone the next. My mum was my best friend and the strongest woman I ever knew. She made me believe in myself, something I have struggled to do since she died. Even in my most insecure moments, mum would be there to tell me I could do anything if I put my mind to it. She was instrumental in all the major achievements of my life. Losing her floored me, but the strength she gave me made me pick myself up and look to the future.

Writing was something I had always wanted to do, but somehow, life always got in the way. Re-evaluating what was important after mum’s death, made me give my dream a go. She would have wanted me to. You know, life often throws you curve balls and it’s OK to let these shake you, beat you down. But then, when you’re ready, it’s time to raise your head and see what’s next. You can use the bad times to help shape the good. So here I am, missing my mum every single day, being grateful for everything she taught me and writing novels.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

From the life I have lived and from the people I have known. It is my lived experience that supports the stories. But on a day-to-day basis, I feel most inspired by Scotland. I have my best ideas when I’m out walking the dog in the Perthshire countryside, or even just looking across at Alyth hill from my window or garden deck. I am totally in love with the Scottish landscape. It’s so wild and dramatic. There’s nowhere else quite like it.

How do you start a book?

I think the answer to this has changed as I have written more. The first few books I wrote were pretty terrible and never saw the light of day. Back then, I started with a plot and tried to map it all out from beginning to end. Doing this, I ended up tying myself in knots. So now, I start with the characters.

Characters are the lifeblood of my stories, but they can be very annoying for a writer! When I first started out with a plot-based approach, I was finding that as I wrote, the different facets of a character’s personality developed, and sometimes, they didn’t fit in the story anymore. So, I ended up changing direction and doing extensive rewrites over and over again. When I start now, I only have a vague plot line. I spend time working on the characters first. Knowing who is in my story before I get going shapes the plot. Good characters really write their own story with only a little bit of nudging from me!

What do you enjoy most about writing?

It’s difficult to name one thing. I have always loved books. There’s nothing better than snuggling up with the dog laid across my feet and escaping into a good story. Being part of creating stories for other people is amazing. But I think what I really enjoy is developing my skills in story-telling. Learning has always been a big part of my life and the satisfaction I get from feeling I’m getting better at creating a story is very fulfilling. I enjoy learning about the craft of writing and love to read other authors’ work to help me develop, as well as for the pure enjoyment of it. Words and books are wonderful things.

What do you find the most difficult about writing?

There’s no doubt that writing a book is hard! I’ve done a lot of hard things in my life but embarking on becoming an author ranks up there as one of the toughest. Like most authors, I’m hypercritical of what I write and as an eternal tinkerer, I find it really tough to get to the point where I think ‘that’s it – the book is finished.’ I always assume another round of revisions would be a good thing, that more tinkering would make the book better. That’s probably true but there comes a point when you have to let a manuscript go and put it out into the world. That’s a scary moment and I’m not sure I’ll ever get comfortable with it.

If someone was considering giving writing a go, have you got any advice?

The first thing would be ‘Go for it!’ If you don’t try, you’ll never know, and life can swallow your dreams if you let it. I think we are often afraid of failure and so we take a more comfortable route. But the one thing I do know is that you can never be sure of what tomorrow will bring, so don’t put things off. Some of the best things in life will be the ones that were the scariest to start and the hardest to achieve. From a writing perspective, I would say ‘make sure you know who you are and what you want to write about’. I don’t think I did when I started this, and so for the first twelve months, I wrote a lot, deleted a lot and panicked a lot. I’m not sure I’m completely secure in my niche as a writer yet, or even whether any author ever is. But I am closer to getting comfortable in my writing skin.