This month’s special guest Gareth L Powell reveals the biggest mistake of his writing career, but how this particular disaster was a blessing in disguise…

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TRANSCRIPT

MARK: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your writing career?

GARETH: Oh, Lord. The worst thing — I don’t know if it’s a mistake, It could have been an Act of God — But was when the first half of the first draft of Descendant Machine vanished.

MARK: Oh, God, I remember this.Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GARETH: I’d been working on it for three months, I think. And then one day, it just wasn’t on my computer. It wasn’t in the recycle bin. It wasn’t, you know, anywhere. I used various kind of, programs to claw through the hard drive to try and find it. And… nothing. It just completely vanished. So if unless I just did something ridiculously stupid in my sleep or, you know… I don’t know what, I’ve no idea what happened to it. But this entire three months work just absolutely vanished. That was a big setback because, you know, that was when I, you know, you go in that feeling where you just go cold.

MARK: Yeah.

GARETH: You know in the, sort of Agatha Christie films from the 70s when there’s, like, a pistol blast or a scream, and then you’d get a shot of a load of crows flapping up from a tree. It’s kind of like that. I just uttered a curse. Venomous. It turned the air to glass and… And I lay on the sofa and thought, I’m never gonna write again. It’s all over. 

MARK: And I remember talking to this, about this at the time, and it was just one of those complete mysteries. It wasn’t like you weren’t backing stuff up. It just absolutely vanished. Is it… because this happened to a friend of mine the other day, and I said, Oh, this happens to all sorts of writers, but every one of them tells me that when they go back and rewrite it, it’s so much better. Would you say that’s true, or am I just trying to make my friend feel good?

GARETH: No, that’s true, but the book I wrote was, substantially different from the first draft I had done, and much better for. So it was a blessing in a very, very heavy disguise.