Karin Slaughter: thriller penned in mountain cabin
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I'm Lucy Collingwood and you're listening to the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service, where we delve into the creative process. And today I'm following the crime writer Karen Slaughter, whose books have been translated into 37 languages, selling 40 million copies around the world. Anyone not familiar with her books might have seen her most famous creation on TV, Will Trent. He's a special agent in Atlanta, Georgia, who notices clues others have missed. I've read several of Karen's 26 novels. They're dark and unflinching. I've stayed up late into the night reading them to make sure that everything works out in the end. So when I first met her last summer, I was excited to find out how she comes up with her ideas.
I have a cabin in the North Georgia mountains, and it's surrounded in nature, and I love looking out the windows. I want to be in the air conditioning because it gets very hot there, but I have giant windows so I can look out the trees, and there's mountain laurel. Occasionally there's a deer, squirrels, all these things, and if it's not too hot, I can leave the windows open and listen to the birds. So that's just this idyllic little setting, and I love it. Do you have a particular routine or ideal conditions for when you write? So I should preface this by saying anyone who wants to be a writer, do not do this, because it's very grueling. And the writers who get up and they do yoga and then they write for four hours and then they have tea and then they go on with their lives are the smart ones.
And what I do is I get up and I start writing. And I keep writing until I fall asleep. I mean, I eat sandwiches and things in between so I don't pass out. And then I sleep and then I get up and I do it again. And I will go to my cabin two weeks at a time and do this for sometimes 16 hours a day for two weeks straight. Sometimes I don't even go outside often. And then I go home for a week and get back in touch with my cat and do all my chores that have been accumulating. And then I go back up for another two weeks. So that's really how I've been doing it for nearly 25 years. Are you absolutely sort of in a bubble? Do you switch off all technology? Absolutely. I mean, I have a TV. I won't live like an animal.
And I have internet, but none of the apps, the internet is solely to look things up or send someone a question who's a specialist in something so that I can address that in the book. But I'm very deliberate in my process. By the time I sit down, I've put in a lot of thought to what I'm going to write in that session.
What inspires Karin Slaughter's writing process?
So I'm not sitting around staring at my navel a lot. I'm ready to write when I get there. And when you say that you've put in a lot of thought, have you got scribbled handwritten notes? So sometimes I'll get back from like I've been touring in the Netherlands and here and so it'll be hotel stationery from wherever I've stayed, where I've had a thought in the middle of the night and just scribbled it. And sometimes I'll get home and I'll think, I have no idea what I wrote this for. But as far as the plot and the twists and the turns, I'm so careful about how that's plotted out that it's very ingrained in my mind.
How do you manage juggling different projects? You're so prolific and you've got your television series and your novels going on at the
You know, we'll see, because this is the first time with a good daughter I've been on set or on set repeatedly, I should say. I'm there every time they're filming, because when you write all the scripts, you have to be there every single day in case they need to change something or something's not working or you need an adjustment or a line's not landing.
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