The dullest of questions (feared by anyone who's ever written the shortest of stories) is, supposedly, 'Where do you get your ideas from?' In the course of writing How to Disappear Completely I think I had about five emails featuring a variant of the question and I'm not sure I answered any of them particularly helpfully or honestly. Really, the answers should be interesting as it can be the most exciting part of the writing process - the spark and burst of enthusiasm before the more workmanlike process of plotting and typing and drafting begins. I think writers tend to fear the question for two reasons, which I'll quickly elaborate on before confessing the root of my own inspirations.

Firstly, they worry about stripping their work of its mystery. Brian Eno once said that, when listening to a record, the last thing you should be thinking about is a band recording in a studio. Similarly, when reading a book (or listening to a podcast), the author doesn't want you to be paying any attention to him (or her). You shouldn't keep falling out of the fictional world to wonder how long the author spent finding names for the characters. (Kilbey Salmon came from a band poster, by the way, his name existing long before he did.)

Secondly, I think writers worry about being caught out. Every author steals, whether from life or art. It's the nature of the thing. Obviously, it's more comfortable to forget about these light-fingered moments and claim divine inspiration. Where caught out, a writer can plead homage. All the same, I thought it might be fun to trace the roots of How to Disappear Completely - in the vein of locating the origin of a train of thought that has jumped several tracks.

To that end, here are a few influences on How to Disappear Completely (still available at Podiobooks.com). In other words, here are some works I burglarised:


Neverwhere.
I only mention this one first as it tends to get mentioned in most reviews and people are always asking me if I've read it. The answer to which is Yes, I have, but it wasn't really on my mind when I was writing HtDC. I started work on what would become How to Disappear Completely way back in 1995. At the time it was set in Australia and The Eternal Footmen were more or less a secret masonic-type order preventing unseemly development. There was a bit of time-travel but without much purpose.

In 1999, I moved to London and began work on what would eventually become (more or less) the finished product. At the time, the Harry Potter books were starting to go critical and, living in London, I loved the idea that there could be secret parts of the city ("forgotten parts") like Diagon Alley tucked away down alleys in Soho or Camden. That rubbed off on HtDC and I started constructing ideas for 'Albion', this forgotten England hidden from view and populated with people history didn't have any room for.

It was only once I started writing that it occurred to me that Neil Gaiman had already done something similar in Neverwhere, which I'd read four or five years earlier and rather liked. (I actually much prefer American Gods, which I recommend to anyone who might have enjoyed HtDC.) As a result, I cut out large parts of the narrative that were set in this alternate London and shifted the focus very much back to the 'real world.' All we're left with from Albion is a few bars and shops, places that are still very familiar but have festered peculiarly from neglect.

The influence of Neverwhere is, I'm sure, quite strongly felt throughout parts of HtDC, but it affected the novel as much in terms of what it couldn't be as what it could. By this I mean, I was very aware of trying to avoid dwelling on concepts Gaiman used in that novel. Ultimately, I feel the stories are quite different, but I understand - and am quite flattered by - the comparison.



Withnail & I.
I love this film. I'm not sure I could ever explain why adequately, so I won't say too much about it. Whereas I worked quite hard to distance HtDC from Neverwhere, I worked just as hard to drag it toward Bruce Robinson's cult 1987 film - possibly the film most quoted by students, worldwide, ever. (With the obvious exception of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) Its drunken quotability aside, there is a wonky majesty and literate, bitter humour to Robinson's script that remains irresistable. His use of dialogue is something most scriptwriters can only aspire toward. More than this, there is such clear, loving characterisation of the sometimes-fraught friendship between the eponymous two and an obvious joy in the use of language (both romantic and vulgar).

Robinson's ability to create poetry from the crudest parts of our existence is something he carried through to his novel The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman, a book I bought and devoured shortly before commencing the first draft of HtDC. More than anything else, it's a book I credit with helping me discover my 'authorial voice', such as it is.

I was determined, when writing HtDC, that it wouldn't read as 'genre fiction'. I wanted to write something that was about language as much as it was plot. Something that had its own voice, even if it borrowed its stresses from elsewhere. I'm very aware of the influence of other writers when I'm working on something, so I'm quite careful about what I read mid-project. Working on HtDC, I carefully avoided reading anything remotely genre-ish. There were three texts I returned to - Great Expectations, Raymond Chandler's Marlowe tales and Thomas Penman. All three are very much in love with the language they're using, albeit in different ways. Chandler's work, for example, reads almost as a form of urban poetry, using words in ways that hadn't been written down before. All three novels have, I hope, left wonderful bruises on my prose.



Minder.
Along with Butch Cassidy and Withnail & I (and before either of them), Minder instilled in me a love of the odd-but-complementary couple. While Kilbey shares a silhouette and several bad habits with Withnail, he has more than a little in common with Arthur Daley. Arthur had a similar love of the dodgy business deal and a knack for getting himself into trouble. Nero was conceived originally as the muscle who would - a la Arthur's Minder, Terry McCann - come to the rescue when things went pear-shaped.

More than this, I think Minder greatly influenced the landscape HtDC inhabits. There are shades of beige to The Albion that belong to Arthur's drinking spot, The Winchester Club, while the circles Kilbey moves in are not a million miles away from the Cockney villains Terry would invariably thump at the end of an episode.

Additionally, I think there's a slight anachronistic quality to Kilbey's world that I suspect owes a little to the DVD release of the early 80s episodes. A slightly faded quality, perhaps. No-one ever believes me, but the first two or three series stand up remarkably well. Each episode is more or less a mini-film, many of them more memorable than the British gangster films of the time.

The final thing I want to say about Minder in terms of HtDC, is its influence on the plot. The structure of the novel, I feel, owes more to television than a traditional novel. I very much wanted to create a series of 'mini-adventures' for Kilbey and co., which would ultimately tie in to an overarching narrative. I love the start of a new adventure with familiar characters and wanted to work a couple of these in to the book. Now I think about it, I was probably thinking more of Between The Lines, an excellent police drama from the 1990s, which was one of the first British series to work in long-running plot threads to an episodic series. (I could write several paragraphs about Between The Lines here, but I'll save that for another time.)


In my next post, I'll look at a few more influences, including music, Cowboy Bebop and Doctor Who.