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" I am, of course, a frustrated rock star - I'd much rather be a rock star than a writer. Or own a record shop. Still, it's not a bad life, is it? You just sit at a computer and make stuff up. "
Ian Rankin
I Am
Bad
Life
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" When I'm writing, I won't know whodunnit until maybe two thirds of the way through. Until then, I know as little as my detective. I just make it up as I go along. It's nerve-wracking, actually. You'll be half through and not know your conclusion. You worry one of these days the ending won't come. I'll be left with only two-thirds of a novel. "
Ian Rankin
Ending
Know
Way
" At all times, think like a writer, and keep those antennae twitching - that way, you pick up new ideas. "
Ian Rankin
New
Ideas
Way
" I'm often asked how I write books, but I don't think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was 'I tend to make it up as I go along.' I'm not sure that's brilliant advice. "
Ian Rankin
Advice
Writing
Creative
" I wrote my first short story for a competition and won second prize. Another competition came up and I won first prize. The first story was published in a newspaper. The second went out on radio. "
Ian Rankin
Story
Competition
Newspaper
" My parents were working class and didn't have much money, so holidays tended to be two weeks in a caravan at St. Andrews or a B&B in Blackpool. "
Ian Rankin
Money
Working
Parents
" Writers always think their greatest work is just ahead of them. "
Ian Rankin
Greatest
Think
Ahead
" Being working class, my parents thought, 'Ian's going to uni, the first in the family,' and I'd do dentistry or accountancy. I was going to do accountancy; then I got a C in Economics and thought, 'Why am I doing this?' The only thing I was interested in was books and literature. "
Ian Rankin
Family
Parents
Thought
" I'm not Rebus. We're not the same. I don't even think he'd like me if we met. He'd think I was a wishy-washy liberal. "
Ian Rankin
Me
Like
Liberal
" My mother worked in a school canteen - then worked in the canteen of a chicken factory. Every Friday, the pay packet money would be allocated to cover bills. "
Ian Rankin
Chicken
Money
School
" I have a strong work ethic, yet I'm incredibly lazy as well. The problem with being a writer is that everything you do can be called research. Sitting in the pub is research. Reading the newspaper can be research. "
Ian Rankin
Work
Strong
Research
" I don't have many friends. It's not because I'm a misanthrope. It's because I'm reserved. I'm self-contained. I get all my adventures in my head when I'm writing my books. "
Ian Rankin
Head
Books
Because
" In real life, writers tend to be quite boring, but in our books, we're having exciting adventures all the time. "
Ian Rankin
Life
Our
Boring
" I used to think that: whenever I heard that someone had taken 10 years to write a novel, I'd think it must be a big, serious book. Now I think, 'No - it took you one year to write, and nine years to sit around eating Kit Kats.' "
Ian Rankin
Eating
Think
Serious
" People aren't coming to me looking for political essays or polemic - they're looking for a rattling good story. "
Ian Rankin
Good
Political
Story
" When I was in my early 20s and still at uni, I won a short-story competition: £200 was the prize. "
Ian Rankin
Early
Competition
Prize
" I've always written. At the age of six or seven, I would get sheets of A4 paper and fold them in half, cut the edges to make a little eight-page booklet, break it up into squares and put in little stick men with little speech bubbles, and I'd have a spy story, a space story and a football story. "
Ian Rankin
Story
Space
Men
" I think writers have to be proactive: they've got to use new technology and social media. Yes, it's hard to get noticed by traditional publishers, but there's a great deal of opportunity out there if you've got the right story. "
Ian Rankin
Technology
Opportunity
Social Media
" The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern. "
Ian Rankin
Need
Control
Crime
" I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks. "
Ian Rankin
Think
Writer
Will
" I'm not qualified for anything. I've had lots of little jobs, like picking grapes and being a tax man. I can't imagine not writing, because I've done it since I was five or six. Maybe I'd work in academia. That's always what the plan was. "
Ian Rankin
Plan
Writing
Done
" The great thing about America is I always come back with more books and more tip-offs of who to read. It's a country in love with crime fiction. "
Ian Rankin
Love
Great
Country
" Right from the very beginning, I knew I wanted to write palpably Scottish fiction. "
Ian Rankin
Knew
Beginning
Scottish
" My father worked in a grocery store. When the grocery chain went into administration, he eventually got a job in the naval dockyard in an office preparing the charts for the boats and the submarines before they headed out. "
Ian Rankin
Office
Got
Father
" A lot of writers, especially crime writers, have an image that we think we're trying to keep up with. You've got to be seen as dark and slightly dangerous. But I'm not like that and I've realised that I don't need to put that on. People will buy the books whether they see a photo of you dressed in black or not. "
Ian Rankin
People
You
Trying
" In 1991, I won the Chandler Fulbright Prize, which came with $20,000 and the stipulation of spending six months in the U.S. "
Ian Rankin
Spending
Which
Won
" I still think most writers are just kids who refuse to grow up. We're still playing imaginary games, with our imaginary friends. "
Ian Rankin
Games
Up
Think
" I don't hang out with cops. "
Ian Rankin
Hang
Out
Cops
" No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say. "
Ian Rankin
Nothing
Say
You
" I would have loved to have been a rock n' roll star. But none of us was musical, and none of us had any instruments. "
Ian Rankin
Star
Been
Rock
" You need a great idea, but then you've got to carry it through. If you get it right, you're going to be a critical success. But not everyone who works hard gets it right, or has the success they deserve: there's an element of luck. "
Ian Rankin
Deserve
You
Success