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" I dunno whether it was to do with my parents - we were working-class - but it was important to me to be self-sufficient. "
Ian Rankin
Me
Self-Sufficient
Parents
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" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Writers always think their greatest work is just ahead of them. "
Ian Rankin
Greatest
Think
Ahead
" 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 took the first James Kelman novel, 'The Bus Conductor Hines', home to my dad. I thought, 'My dad will like this; it's written in Scots.' But my dad said: 'I can't read that.' He was reading James Bond and John le Carre. That was part of what attracted me to crime - the idea of getting a wide audience. "
Ian Rankin
Bond
Crime
Reading
" At all times, think like a writer, and keep those antennae twitching - that way, you pick up new ideas. "
Ian Rankin
New
Ideas
Way
" My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer. "
Ian Rankin
Think
Money
Live
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Why does any novelist keep writing long after they've made money? Because they've failed to write the perfect novel. "
Ian Rankin
Perfect
Keep
Long
" 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
" 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
" 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 grew up in a family that was working-class, which taught me to be careful with money. "
Ian Rankin
Which
Be Careful
Family
" 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
" I go to Canada at least every two years. "
Ian Rankin
Every
Years
Two
" 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
" 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
" I don't want the books to become PR exercises for the police; I want to have the freedom to write about cops who cross the line: bad cops. "
Ian Rankin
Become
Want
Police
" I wanted to be able to support myself without begging for handouts from the state. All of the writers I knew when I was a student were all getting grants from the Scottish Arts Council. "
Ian Rankin
Arts
Without
Student
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Punk gave you a kind of chutzpah, so even trying to be a writer, I just thought, 'Well, I'm going to send poems to 'Radio Times,' short stories to the 'Observer,' just have a go. "
Ian Rankin
Short
Radio
You