Show Your Working is a regular column exploring how writers get things done. In this instalment, we take a peek into the writing routine of author Liam Pieper. His latest novel, Appreciation, is out now.
Your new novel, Appreciation, features a ghostwriter. You also do this job. Can you tell us about this form of writing?
I got into this line of work the same way anyone becomes a ghost of any kind, I suppose—by accident. It’s a long story, and very funny and highly redacted.
The ability to capture and, where necessary, mimic voice is much the same as used in fiction. Being a ghostwriter has made me a much better fiction writer in my own right because I’ve finally learned to write dialogue where every character isn’t just me talking to me about me.
Capturing another person’s voice is straightforward; you sit with someone who has a story to tell and help them work out how they want to tell it. People instinctively know how to tell their own stories but not necessarily how to fit them into one cohesive story held up by the kind of narrative arc that is going to be rewarding for a reader.
Being a ghostwriter has made me a much better fiction writer.
The process can be intense for both sides. It’s a bit like therapy but often with booze and always with an appreciable lack of moral codes that medicos abide by. Of course, secrecy is required. I never discuss who I work with—because I’ve usually signed an NDA but also because it would be impolite. I’m lucky enough that—and I know this sounds like a lie—I’ve genuinely liked and enjoyed working with everybody I’ve done a book for. It’s so rewarding to see how happy new authors are when they publish a book with their name on it. And I can’t tell you how relaxing it is to publish a book that doesn’t have my own name on it. Pure bliss.
Describe your personal writing practice?
I fit in writing when I can. This is usually all day/every day, but the best stuff is very late at night when the rest of the world leaves me alone and the cats are full of crunchy treats.
I’m a big believer in having a plan and then ruining it. The mode is slightly different for non-fiction vs fiction, but for the latter, I’ll have a broad idea of character, plot and beat, and as I start to write, it will all fall apart as the characters take on autonomy. That said, the only good and universal piece of writing advice I have is to finish the first draft of what you set out to do. It will be imperfect and messy and make no sense in many parts, but nobody will ever know that because you don’t have to show anyone. In fact, it’s very polite if you don’t.
When you start to write a novel, you might have a basic idea of the plot, but it’s going to be coloured by a grab bag of your own immediate concerns and anxieties, great and small, petty and existential. The best novels come from those battles with yourself, when you are falling apart and made to confront the unpleasant corners of your life. That’s something that happens on the journey. Luckily the life of a jobbing writer is widely precarious and provides many of those moments.
What’s your editing process like?
Once you have the first draft locked, you can step back a bit and see the cohesive story that’s been bubbling away in your subconscious and has snuck up on you while you worked at your first attempt. The first draft of everything is a bit shit, so don’t sweat it—consider it a roadmap of the real first draft, which is technically the second.
The best novels come from those battles with yourself.
Every book is different so the refining process will be different. I can think of only two things that will reliably help every single book.
- Once you’ve finished the first (or second) draft, cellar it. Put it away for a couple of weeks and let it rest. Then come back to it and you’ll be able to see all its flaws more clearly—for better or worse.
- Read it out loud to yourself. It triggers a different part of your brain to read your work out loud, and your ear will pick up clunky phrases and sentences that don’t work. Do it. Particularly the dialogue. Especially the sex scenes. It’s preferable to hear the bad writing in one’s own clunky smut in privacy than it is in the studio booth with the poor actor who has to record the audiobook of your novel. Please, I beg you, read your work aloud.
How do you know when your story is done?
It’s never done! You can be pretty happy with a story but five minutes after it goes to print, you’ll suddenly realise just one more thing the story needs to perfect it. In practical terms, the story is done when your editor/publisher wrests it from your cold dead hands. But that’s when the real work begins. I’m lucky enough to have worked with editors whose talent and patience far outstrip mine, and any success I’ve had is entirely due to them convincing me that it’s often in my best interests not to follow my instincts.
What does your workspace look like?
I don’t have a dedicated workspace as such. I’m never in the same place for very long, so if I’m not working in a public library, I’m usually using someone else’s home as office space in exchange for minding their cat while they’re away.
Right now, I’m borrowing a friend’s apartment and working from an Ikea desk that I insisted I knew how to build, and then assembled so poorly that it has become a lasting monument to my hubris. It’s so wonky that the inertia from the slightest touch of a pen sets it swaying for a full minute. I spend my workday trying not to upset the desk, because to do so would attract the attention of the resident cat, who makes a particularly poor co-worker because they are chatty, solipsistic and malicious.
The first draft of everything is a bit shit, so don’t sweat it.
I find myself in several toxic relationships with different cats, all of which share an uncanny ability to sense when I’ve finally slipped into that liminal space where it’s possible to create (a mental state that I find very hard to achieve) and will take that moment to ruin it by knocking a glass of water onto my laptop or just stomping their little angel paws and crying until I give them a handful of crunchy treats.
Pieper with Zelda the cat. Images: Supplied.
I work best in a totally featureless environment. A blank wall is ideal. Exposed brick is a little too exciting for me. My imagination works best when there is absolutely nothing but me in the room and there is nothing to distract it. In reality, I might be in an airless asbestos shed, but in my MIND PALACE, I am cooking an understated but elegant osso bucco alla Milanese for my friend Hugh Dancy, who is a big fan of all my books. Unfortunately, the various cats of my acquaintance guarantee that this rarely, if ever, happens.
Are you an analog or digital writer?
Extremely digital. My handwriting is illegible, to the point where I never received my pen licence and am still not authorised to use one. Once in a while, I’ll have an idea for a story while I’m at a bar and write it down on a scrap of paper, but when I look at it in the morning it inevitably says something inscrutable and embarrassing.
Pieper’s handwritten writing note. Image: Supplied.
So analog is not for me, I’m completely helpless without technology. But at the same time, I cannot work if I’m anywhere near the internet. I need to turn the internet off. Off completely—at the router, on my phone. It helps if I can physically bury my phone somewhere far away when I attend to the workday.
What sort of software and hardware do you use to get your work done?
I’m a Scrivener evangelist. It organises all your chunks of text neatly on the left, and the split-screen function lets you swap text in and out. It’s the only way I can look at a manuscript in the works and see how it will fit as a cohesive whole. It’s simple but a game changer for me.
I work best in a totally featureless environment. A blank wall is ideal.
There are lots of little bells and whistles that I love about Scrivener too. Watching the daily word count target bar fill up from a panicked orange to a soothing green is very rewarding. There’s also a character name generator, where you can plug in the cultural or geographic background of a character, and it will generate one that is serviceable and less racially problematic than your standard J K Rowling character.
Once I’ve got a first draft together, I’ll move to Microsoft Word to finesse spelling and grammar, although it’s a clunky nightmare at times. The fact that we live in 2024 and somehow Word remains the industry standard feels like a prank being played on all of us by mischievous billionaires.
How do you navigate your various kinds of work/study?
I have terrible mental whiplash from switching between modes. My only solution so far is to burnout from overwork and periodically self-combust. I’m working on it but that’s only more work to do now that I think about it.
Has your writing practice changed over the years?
Very much so. I started as a teenage edgelord, and by very, very, very slow and incremental improvements, I’ve become a serviceable journeyman novelist.
How do you encourage inspiration to strike?
Just type. Set an achievable daily word count. 500 is a good, helpful number. Even if what you write is garbage, at least you have 500 words of garbage to polish in the morning.
Think of your creativity as a rusted tap in a very old house. When you turn it on every morning, it’s going to run dirty for a few minutes. But give it time, and the water starts to run clear. A clumsy metaphor, but there you go. If you write all morning and hit 500 words, chances are there will be something in the final 250 you can use.
What’s next for you?
As it happens, my new novel Appreciation has just come out. It’s a journey through the seedy underbelly of the art scene in Australia. A book about celebrity and fame and how both those things break your brain.
It’s funny, only a little bit sad and easily my favourite of my books. I’ve packed in as much fun, plot, heart and art/lit world gossip as my lawyers would let me. It’s a very silly, playful book and I hope you love it!
Appreciation is out now via Penguin Books Australia.
