One Hundred Names

Behind the scenes writing One Hundred Names

How did you come up with the title for this book? Inspiration is so hard to pin down, but can you remember anything specific that caught your imagination and helped fire you up to write the story of Kitty and her list of one hundred names?

I was half paying attention to the television one day, the MTV awards were on, and actress Jennifer Lawrence appeared on the television to talk about her upcoming movie – which I heard as One Hundred Names. As soon as I heard this, I stopped what I was doing and looked up to see what the movie was about. Something about the title excited me, it made me want to hear more, it made my mind go wild trying to figure out who the one hundred people could be and how they were linked and what the story might be. So my mind was incredibly active as I was watching the trailer, and as usual whenever I heard a good title or idea, I was feeling jealous I hadn’t thought of it. Then I realized it wasn’t called One Hundred Names at all, it was The Hunger Games! I was so delighted that I’d got it wrong because it meant that I could use the title for myself. The idea very quickly formulated in the seconds it took from mishearing the name to realising I was wrong. It’s incredible how ideas come, and what triggers them, and this is a perfect example of how something totally unrelated can spark off an idea. When I get an idea I become so excited, my adrenalin is pumping and I need to find a pen and paper straight away to write it down before I lose it, as it flows and develops so rapidly in my head. I remember not having a pen and paper near me so I emailed myself the idea on my Blackberry.

Instantly I created two very different characters to tell the story. One was a detective who found a list of names and had to solve a crime, the other was a young journalist who found a list of names and had to write a story. I went with the journalist who had to write a story. I could relate to her.

Did you plan the plot for this novel in detail before you started? Did you know how the book would end before you started writing the first line?

It was September/October 2011 and I was just about to begin publicity for my novel The Time of My Life so I didn’t – couldn’t – think the idea through any more in major detail. Over the next few months I just let it bubble away so that it could grow and take on a life that would be three dimensional and exciting, something that would be worthy of a novel. During those months I travelled to Australia, Spain, Germany, the UK, and all around Ireland, but I was thinking about the idea the entire time. I felt sure it was going to be my next novel and I was excited. But I was nervous. I knew that the idea was a good one, possibly one of my best, but I felt it was too adventurous. To have to come up with one hundred characters, plus the main characters, was much too big for me. It would be close to impossible to write, not to mention confusing for the readers. I toyed with changing it to Ten Names or another more manageable number but I wasn’t happy with that idea. It had to be One Hundred Names or nothing at all. So I kept pushing myself away from the idea and trying to think of something else for my next novel.

I love getting ideas, I thrive on ideas, other people’s and my own, and the terrifying thing for a writer is to not have the idea. This time I had too many ideas. I had so many characters and storylines in my head that had been developed over the years. I had to begin work on a new book in January and I couldn’t decide which one I was going to write. This was unusual for me because it has always been very clear to me over the years what I should write. It would be the story that would take over my mind and refuse to leave me alone until it was written. It would be the story where I would hear the character’s voice in my head and they would become so real I would be compelled to tell their story. It would be the story where the first few sentences would already be forming in my head, just begging to be written. It was the One Hundred Names idea which wouldn’t leave me alone but I had a problem; I had the great idea, but I didn’t have the characters.

I wasn’t ready to write my novel and I only had six months to the deadline. I’ll be honest, I wondered if there would be a book at all by June. January came and I still couldn’t begin the novel, so I began writing a novella called Herman Banks and the Ghostwriter. That took me a month to write and while I was concentrating on that – a very different project for me that funnily enough is exactly what I needed to help me work out what I was going to do next – somewhere the wheels were in motion for my next novel. Some people ask me what they should do when they draw a blank, when they get writer’s block. I used to tell them I’d take a break, I’d empty the dishwasher, do the washing, busy myself so that I was actively doing something but all the while my brain would be still mulling it over. It’s the equivalent of giving someone peace and quiet while they try to remember something. Writing Herman Banks and the Ghostwriter was my equivalent. I had to give my mind some peace and quiet. Ironically, Herman Banks and the Ghostwriter is a story about a man with writer’s block and the lengths he’d go to in order to write a novel.

That’s when I had my eureka moment.

I had an idea but no characters. On the other hand I had lots of characters and stories that I’d been working on for years but which had never been developed enough to become novels of their own. A-ha.

I had six characters that I had been thinking about for years, characters that I had wanted to write as short stories, or develop as television shows, or write as novels. I was so familiar with them and their stories I suddenly realized this is what they were for. I would focus on them.

They were my one hundred names.

I started writing in February 2012 and I finished in April 2012. I have never written a book so quickly in my life. PS I Love You had been written, obsessively, through hibernation, in three months and I thought I would never achieve that again. But it happened and I think the reason it could happen was that I had spent years living with all of these characters, I understood them so much already, it was just a matter of writing them down.

What was so unusual for me was placing them together in the same story. There is a scene where Kitty introduces the characters to each other, which is unusual for her because she is seeing them together for the first time. Different people from her life all come together in one room. I felt as she felt, they were all from different stories in my mind, from different notebooks, created years apart, and here I was introducing them to each other. It almost felt like they were reaching out of one notebook to shake the hand of a character in another. It was kind of magical. It would be like putting all of my previous characters from novels in a room together. What would happen if I put Holly, Rosie, Elizabeth, Sandy, Joyce, Lou, Tamara and Lucy all in a room together? It would be bizarre – but special – and that’s how it felt for me.

As for writing the first line of my novel? I told my neighbour I was pregnant. I hadn’t told many people. She said she was like a graveyard. Secrets went in but nothing ever came back out. I’d never heard it before and I loved it. That morning I knew I had my first line for the novel. Constance became The Graveyard, Kitty’s trusted mentor and friend.

How did you come about creating Mary-Rose and Sam, and Sam’s unusual tendency to want to constantly propose to her in a public setting? What motivated Sam, do you think?

My husband and I never had a proposal moment, we were together for ten years and just decided to get married. It was a joint decision, nothing like in the movies, just a conversation one day where we finally agreed on when we were going to do it, because if had stopped being a question. When we were on honeymoon in Venice, getting dolled up for our first night out for dinner, I thought that it would be funny if we had our proposal that night. Just because we never had one. Then my mind started thinking about it – what if somebody overheard us and thought it was the real thing, we would have to pretend, then what if it became so big we had to really lie, what if the manager made a big deal, made an announcement, struck up the music, sent the musicians to our table to serenade us… We would have everybody’s attention, everybody’s best wishes, possibly even a free drink and we wouldn’t be able to admit the truth, it would have gone too far. I thought it was funny, then I thought about a couple who would do that every night, take advantage of people’s kindness in a different restaurant just to get a free drink or a free meal.

The following night we were out for a meal and the couple beside us told us they had just got engaged, he had proposed to her on a gondola. Not thinking about my idea from the previous night, we automatically sent over two glasses of champagne to their table. Then I realized what I’d done and knew I had to write the story about the couple.

Sam and Mary-Rose were born.

We never did have our proposal.

After a day spent writing about a character going through a difficult time, do you feel quite emotionally exhausted by the time you leave your office and go home?

I walk home from the office and whether it’s in wind, rain, sleet or snow, I need that time to blow the thoughts out of my head, to get out of the world that I’ve been living in all day so that I can go home and be a person that lives in this world. The walk helps me remember that my character’s problems are not mine and that whatever I’ve lived through has not been my reality. I’m glad that I care that much when I’m writing, otherwise the writing wouldn’t have the emotion that is integral to the telling of the story, but I think it’s healthier, when you have a family at least, to leave that behind in the office and pick it up again the next morning. It’s taken me some years but I think I’m almost there. But like everyone coming home from work, one’s head is burning and you have to let the flames go out before you walk in the door to your house.

Kitty starts off as quite a troubled character who doesn’t always make the best decisions – did you ever get frustrated with her?

When we meet Kitty, she approaches life and people in a way that I never would and yes, her ways annoyed me. I felt she was greedy, always wanting more from people than they were willing to give, trying to find out more in a dishonest way. She didn’t respect privacy, she wasn’t honest. But I soon changed her, control freak that I am. She develops a conscience and learns that having one doesn’t ruin her ability to tell a story, it actually makes it better because she starts to connect with people again. And when you connect with people they trust you and when they trust you, they talk. She remembers the story is about them and not her.

Constance advises Kitty that telling a story is about seeking the truth, getting to the heart of what is real. Is that what you aim for in your writing, too?

People ask if there’s ever a part of me in any of my main characters and while people will be looking for similarities between Kitty and me, it’s really Constance that I’ve chosen as my vessel to air my opinions!

I think often reporters want to tell their own story, they hear something which interests them, they perhaps talk to the person the story is related to and then they spin it, in a direction which suits them. Sometimes it’s better and more interesting to just listen to what the person has to say. That’s the story. It doesn’t have to make sense, it doesn’t have to be clever, it doesn’t have to all add up, there doesn’t have to be a reason for everything. Sometimes things just are as they are. Ask the right questions, listen to the answers and write it. When I’m writing, even though I’m writing fiction, I have to write what I believe is real. Would somebody really feel this way in this moment? If it doesn’t feel right, I can’t write it.

While I was writing The Time of My Life, in the opening chapters Lucy Silchester is talking about her life. Even though it was all the information I wanted to convey and I was describing the life I wanted her to have, it didn’t feel authentic, something about it felt like a writer writing her words rather than what she would actually say. I kept reading it over wondering what I could tweak to make it feel more real. I couldn’t tweak anything. I’d have to delete it. But I liked it. I liked how I’d written it. I liked how she sounded. Then I figured it out. So after her long introduction about who she was and what she was about, I simply wrote, “Okay. I lied.” This felt right. Lucy, the compulsive liar was born. She would lie about everything. She would always tell stories about herself which weren’t true but through hearing her lies, her truth would be known. That felt real. For me, that was getting to the heart of what was real.

I don’t think writers should be writing what they think people want to read, I think they should be writing about what moves them, what they find interesting and only then will the reader care. Likewise, I think that people whose job it is to find the stories shouldn’t be looking for what they think people want to read, they should look for something that moves or interests them. Often the response to my work from the TV and film world is, “Sorry, we’re looking for vampires stories now” or “Sorry, the erotic story is hot right now”. I think people should be just simply looking for a good story. I think that audiences and readers really just want a good story at all times no matter what appears to be in fashion.

I’m always asked why I choose to write commercial fiction. As if secretly inside I possess the skill to write literary works, crime or historical fiction but I’m repressing it. I write what is considered commercial fiction because that’s the way that I write. That’s my voice. It’s just there. I haven’t created it, no more than when we open our mouths we don’t decide what pitch or accent we will use. We speak as we naturally speak. I write as I naturally write. I’m not aiming my work at anyone for any reason. I write it and the people who are interested read it. Simple.

Did you use a telephone book to search for the one hundred names, or did you make them all up?

Yes, I spent a long time going through the phone book looking for the names that jumped out at me. I put myself in Constance’s shoes and tried to think of what she would have done. Knowing what she was trying to achieve, I tried to see what names would jump out at her.

Constance and I agree on there being a lot of Murphys in Ireland.

One of the many ideas in One Hundred Names is that everyone could secretly be a diamond in the rough – is this something you believe in as well?

I simply think that everybody has a story to tell. While those stories may not be interesting to everybody, I don’t believe anybody is boring and nobody should feel that they are. People are fascinating creatures and we don’t have to go far to hear an interesting story or find a hero, or hear a genuine love story, or something that will break our heart. Those stories are all around us, and exist within the people we see and talk to everyday. We just have to ask, then listen.