Breaking Dead Book Tour – Five Things I Can’t Write Without By Corrie Jackson

Reference books
You should have seen my husband’s face when our shelves first filled up with volumes on serial killers, poisons and other ways to commit murder. Crime reference books are invaluable. That said, know where to draw the line. Don’t waste valuable writing time reading your twenty-fourth book about fingerprint dusting. I could have finished Breaking Dead in half the time if I’d followed this advice. Also: contacts. I collect experts like Gwyneth collects mung beans. Forensics, police, psychologists, journalists; you name it, they’re on my list. What better way to pull the reader into the scene than to talk to someone who’s been there?

Noise-cancelling headphones
Kurt Vonnegut said: ‘When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth’. Try doing it with two tiny kids in the house, Kurt. I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve. One: noise-cancelling headphones (seriously, a bomb could go off on my street and I wouldn’t know). Two: my kids don’t know I work from home. I know. I hide upstairs and when I come down in the evening, I grab my coat and pretend I’ve just come in from outside. Admittedly this only works if your kids are young enough (mine are six months and four). So far neither has twigged. One day I’ll tell them, then put the proceeds from book sales towards their therapy.

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Fashion websites
Ah, the internet. Every writer’s Achilles Heel. If you don’t rein yourself in, you’ll fall headfirst down the rabbit hole and come up for air nine hours later wondering what happened to the day and why you’re watching a video of a skateboarding bulldog (check him out on YouTube. Hilarious). That said, I couldn’t inhabit the crime world without clocking off every now and again to surf fashion sites. They remind me the world is full of beauty; important when you’re arse-deep in bullet-wound research (see above).