Tim Butcher / Features / Untitled Books

"I am coming to a fork in life’s road, an important and private one."

Tim Butcher

Tim Butcher, award-winning journalist and audacious adventurer, on the writing process that has shaped his new portrait of modern Africa, Blood River.

Where are you right now?
In a friend's house in Clapham, at her kitchen table, a wired, wire-haired terrier swirling round my ankles.

Where do you write?
At home in Cape Town in an old whaler's cottage with a view of the sea.

How do you write?
Slowly. I spent years working as a foreign correspondent, a job which requires speed in writing. When setting about my books my hare becomes a tortoise.

What keeps you writing?
Conviction that the story is worth telling.

Who do you write for?
For those out there who might share my curiosity.

Do you discuss your work with anyone?
Jane, my girlfriend and the mother of our two children, has first dibs on everything: the concept, the outline, the drafting, the manuscript, the cover, the positioning in bookshop displays.

How do you know if your work is good?
By good I understand the question to mean `good enough to convince me the author'. I just know. I know when it is not working and I know when it is. It is more feeling than knowledge, the feeling that this is the house you want to buy and live in and this one isn't.

Do you have any unwritten characters in mind?
I write non-fiction travel-history books. I meet many characters on my journey only a few of whom make it into my books. There are several who made it into the first draft but ended up on the cutting-room floor. I am not sure whether they would curse or thank me.

Which book do you wish you'd written?
I would like to write any book that allows a reader to truly escape.

What is your literary guilty pleasure?

Stopping reading a book halfway through. Knowing how much has gone into the writing used to make me feel terribly guilty but I have learned to live with that guilt.

Which writer made you want to write?
A natural history author who signed his name BB. Strangely he illustrated his own books and used no nom de plume for the artwork so his books would be `Written by BB and illustrated by Denys Watkins-Pitchford'.

Who's the most exciting author writing today?
Any author has the power to be exciting. It can often be simply a matter of timing.

If you weren't writing you'd be...?
Thinking about writing.

What next?
A decision. I am coming to a fork in life's road, an important and private one.

.................................................................................................................................................
Chasing the Devil is published by Chatto & Windus
.................................................................................................................................................

Thursday, 23 September, 2010