STILL SPRINTING

Derek Parker talks to the millionaire author Jeffrey Archer

Despite the recent and expensive failure of his latest West End play, Jeffrey Archer is not noticeably down and a considerable distance from out. With Kane and Abel having sold over three million copies in England and the paperback of Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, continuing to rip smartly out of the bookshops at the rate of a thousand copies a day, fifteen years after its first publication, he has little real reason to be permanently dispirited.

It’s common knowledge that literature is not his first love. He only started writing in his mid-thirties, when a promising political career collapsed and he resigned a safe seat in Parliament amid business and financial difficulties which could have crushed most men for good. The legend that he wrote his first novel with cold-blooded intention of making a fortune, is, however, only a legend.

‘I always tell people who say that, and who aren’t in the profession, that if it were true, - and if it were that easy – everyone’d be doing it. No, I did it much more as an exorcism, to keep working after I’d left the House, because I couldn’t get a job. It was vitally important to be physically working – to believe in the work ethic. Oh yes, I wanted the book to be published, to be read, but it was much more to have done something. In fact, the advance on the first book was £ 3000 and they published 3000 copies, so you couldn’t say I wrote it for the money’.

Penny became an international bestseller, and from that day, as an author, he has never looked back.

Both as a reader and author, Archer divides novelists into storytellers and writers. Certainly with him, the important thing is the story. This doesn’t come easy. ‘In fact very little comes, to begin with. I’m writing a book currently – I’ve done the first draft. But I never know what’s on the next line, what’s in the next paragraph, what’s on the next page. I just let it happen.’

It happens mainly between six and eight in the morning. ‘I like that session. It’s the only original session. Then I correct from three till five, correct from six till eight, go to bed at nine o’clock. Two thousand words if it’s a good day.’

The writing has to fit into a political schedule. Still offered several safe Parliamentary seats a year, which he firmly turns down, he accepts innumerable speaking engagements all over the country. But at certain times of the year ‘nobody wants you. I went away on December 15^th to write until January 15^th. There are ten weeks a year when nobody wants you to speak, and that’s when the writing gets done.

He values his relationship with his publisher to an extent which must warm their hearts. ‘I don’t think authors can have natural friends in publishing houses; but there’s mutual respect. They’re good publishers, and I’m proud to be with them.’

And his editor?

My editor is called Richard Cohen. He’s tough. He drives me and drives. He never writes a word – that’s not his job; but he guides, guides, guides the whole time – he’s never ‘satisfied. He doesn’t have a lot to do with plot – I believe he thinks that’s my strength. He’ll get me to build characters – build, build, build the whole time. He knows he’s right.

He’ll go on and on at me; he won’t give in. Kicking him has absolutely no effect – he doesn’t even bruise. Nine times out of ten, I believe he’s right. He has tremendous judgment. He’s a class editor.’

Influences?

‘I like story-tellers. I’m a story-teller. I’m not good enough to be a writer. I’m Jeffrey Archer and I tell a tale, I hope people turn the pages, and I hope they enjoy it, and in the end, that’s what I ask for.’