00:00People often ask me what made me take up writing.
00:03Many of them, I fancy, wonder whether to take my answer seriously,
00:08although it's a strictly truthful one.
00:10You see, I put it all down to the fact that I never had any education.
00:13Perhaps I'd better qualify that by admitting I did eventually go to school in Paris
00:17when I was 16, or thereabouts.
00:20But until then, apart from being taught a little arithmetic,
00:23I'd had no lessons to speak of at all.
00:25Although I was gloriously idle,
00:27in those days children had to do a good many things for themselves.
00:31But I found myself making up stories and acting the different parts,
00:35and there's nothing like boredom to make you write.
00:37So by the time I was 16 or 17,
00:40I'd written quite a number of short stories and one long, dreary novel.
00:44By the time I was 21,
00:45I'd finished the first book of mine ever to be published,
00:49The Mysterious Affair at Stiles.
00:51I'd sent it to one or two publishers who didn't want it,
00:54and eventually it went to John Lang.
00:56About a year later, I heard it had been accepted.
01:00Well, that's how it began,
01:02and since that time I've written something like 55 books and half a dozen plays.
01:08I do find that one's friends are curious about the way one works.
01:12What is your method, they want to know.
01:14Well, the disappointing truth is that I haven't much method.
01:18I type my own drafts on an ancient but faithful machine I've owned for years,
01:23and I find a dictaphone useful for short stories or for recasting an act of a play,
01:29but not for the more complicated business of working out a novel.
01:33No, I think the real work is done in thinking out the development of your story
01:37and worrying about it until it comes right.
01:40That may take quite a while.
01:42Then when you've got all your materials together, as it were,
01:45all that remains is to try to find time to write the thing.
01:48Three months seems to me quite a reasonable time to complete a book.
01:52On the other hand, plays, I think, are better written quickly.
01:56Of course, writing plays is much more fun than writing books.
01:59You haven't got to bother about long descriptions of places and people
02:03or about deciding how to space out your material.
02:06And you must write pretty fast to keep in the mood
02:09and to keep the talk flowing naturally.
02:11I prefer to write a play as a play, that is, rather than to adapt a book.
02:16The only reason I ever did that was because I didn't care very much
02:20for what happened when other people tried to turn my books into plays.
02:23So, in the end, I had to do it myself.
02:46Thank you.
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