An Interview with Thomas Perry

Thomas Perry is an award winning mystery author. He has published over seventeen novels. When he's not writing he's producing television shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation.

How did you get into writing? At what age did you know you wanted to be a writer?

My parents were both teachers. They made it clear to me that anything of any importance that happened, was discovered, proven, disproven, created, invented, dug up, or understood would eventually be described in one or another of the books on the bookshelves. So as soon as I learned to read, I realized that everybody doing intellectual work is a writer. But as I grew, I realized that the part that interested me most was not the reporting of new developments, but the writing itself. I would say that happened around age 13. I didn't have any notion that I'd ever be able to earn a living at it, but I knew I wanted to write.

What was your first book or story that you completed? Did you ever get it published?

The first story I remember completing was in eighth grade English class. It was a long short story about a boy roughly my age trying to arrange an escape from Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius was about to erupt. Needless to say, it wasn't published. I got an A on it, though.

How did you finally get published? When were you able to write on a full time basis? Please explain your success story?

I had some poems and things published in college magazines at Cornell. At that time I wrote my first book-length story, and kept writing stories and novels for a number of years while I went to graduate school and worked in universities. It took me until I was about thirty before I wrote one that seemed to me would be interesting to people who were not related to me. I called it "The Butcher's Boy," and it was about a professional killer who gets in trouble with his organized crime clients. I got a list of agents approved by the Authors' Guild, and began at the beginning of the alphabet and wrote agents a letter of inquiry and a synopsis of the book. Fortunately for me, an agent whose name began with "B" asked to read the manuscript. He then sold it to the legendary mystery editor Suzanne Kirk at Scribner's. She published it and I won an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America.

I continued to work in universities for a couple of years, but then was offered a job writing scripts for prime-time network television series. My wife Jo and I decided to collaborate. After we'd done a few scripts we took a staff job at Universal Studios, and continued doing that from 1984 until the beginning of 1990, when our first daughter was born. At about that time I was offered a 5-book publishing contract, so I dropped everything else. To summarize, I guess I worked at other jobs eight years after my first novel was published. Since then I've done nothing but write novels.

What is your writing schedule like? Do you write in the mornings, evenings, and for how long?

My writing schedule has always been fairly rigid. I've worked at it as though it were a job. After I took my kids to school in the morning I would begin writing. I would stop when my wife brought the kids home from school, and I would almost never work while they were at home. Whatever breaks or days off I took, I took with my family. In the past couple of years we've had dogs, so I don't start in the morning until we've walked them. And next year our younger daughter will be away at college, so I won't be driving anyone to school.

How do you get your ideas? What is your method for remembering them?

Ideas are the easiest thing in the world. They seem to exist in an infinite number. In every day's newspaper there are fifteen articles that would make a good book. The hard thing is finding an idea that's fertile enough to keep the writer interested for the year it takes to write the book. I think the big temptation is to accept an early one that isn't worth pursuing at that length. So you have to be patient.

If you get writer’s block, how do you get over it?

I've been writing professionally for about thirty years, and wrote for pleasure for the twenty before that, and I've never had writer's block. When I feel reluctant to write, I force myself to write through it, and pretty soon I find something worth thinking about. I think one cure is to have had real, honest-to-God jobs before you begin to write. Then you appreciate what a privilege it is to be able to spend your time writing, and you're eager to do it.

What are your thoughts on self publishing?

I don't know much about self-publishing. I know there are success stories. But the reason we sell our work is so we'll have the money to continue to spend our time writing rather than, say, working as waiters or truck drivers. To the extent that a method produces that money, it's good. To the extent that succeeding at it requires you to spend your time handling the business side of things, it's bad.

What piece of advice would you give to someone thinking of becoming a writer? What is a good starting point for them?

The only starting point I can recommend for writers is to read everything you can get your hands on, from the King James edition of the Bible to the latest Allan Guthrie novel to David Sedaris's books to a stack of magazines. And write. Do all the writing you can--stories, memoirs, novels, poems, journals, fragments. Never be afraid to write, and never worry about anything except improving the quality. This is true for all writers, new or old. You have no responsibility to show anybody any of your writing until you're proud of it, so you should never fear embarrassment. You don't even have to tell anybody you're writing until you want to.

To find out more about Thomas Perry and his work, check out Thomas Perry's website.