Post by Marta Sobczak

For a successful crime writer, Phil Viner turns out to be surprisingly amusing in person. His sense of humor made us burst into laughter more than once when he came to visit the University of Westminster in November, even though the subject of his talk included a recipe for describing the perfect crime. Not a typical Friday as we know it.

One of the greatest things about meeting a successful writer is that we get to learn about the publishing world and its rules first hand.  Phil talked us through the realities and responsibilities of being an author, the tough work, and tight deadlines. And since writing seems, to most of us, a long process,  full of ups and downs, I’ll admit that I was shocked to hear that some writers have contracts for two or even more books a year. When I spoke later with my colleagues, everyone (including me) seemed to be asking themselves the same question: Could I ever be that writer?

Phil’s story is material for a good novel in itself. Almost twenty years after he wrote his first unsuccessful novel, and following the financial crash which forced him to look for a new job, he took a risk and asked his wife if he could take two years to write a new book. Luckily for all of us, she said yes, and the incredible adventure began.

During our creative writing studies here at Westminster we debate what inspires us and what it take to be a writer. In Phil’s case, it was his two year-old daughter and the terrible vision of what would happen if she got hurt. He asked himself the question that we all do at some point in our life: what would we do for love? How far are we able to go, how dark can we become in the name of revenge for our loved ones, and lost ones? Phil created characters who are driven by these questions, and prepared to sacrifice their lives to find a killer. In doing so, he takes us into mysterious corners of human nature, where love can mend or break one’s heart and change a person forever.

Robert Frost once said ‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader’. You must be the first person to love your story, to feel attached to it to the point when you can’t stop thinking about it. When your characters are alive, and their fate is in your hands, you must be the first one who cares about them. The emotions we put into the stories we tell are the most powerful way of reaching others’ hearts and minds. This is the passion I saw when Phil Viner introduced us to the worlds he has created in his books. It was empowering, honest and fascinating.

By his example, we can also learn that finding the one perfect story that others will fall in love with can take a while. But we should never stop trying. Stories live within us. When there is one that moves you to your bones, all you have to do, as Ernest Hemingway once said, is to ‘sit down at a typewriter and bleed’.

Marta Sobczak,  5 December 2017