You all know her as Overdose.am’s film specialist, but Anouk has more up her sleeve than eating popcorn and writing about it. The 20th of October, her book De Almeerse Rioolmoorden will be published. Yes, that’s right. Her book. I sat down with her to find out more about how this came to be, and what else she is hiding from us.
‘I have been wanting to write a book since I learned to write’, she starts off. ‘I have always been writing stories. It started out with a story about a talking tree, and they kept on evolving. I was convinced that I would eventually write a book some day, but I didn’t think it would happen until I was like 50.’
Mental role-playing
‘However, I changed my mind after I read Maurice Seleky’s Ego Faber,’ Anouk jokes, ‘even I can do something like thís!’ From that moment on she started working on the idea for a story. Most of it happened in her head, where she was also getting to know the characters better. ‘I kept mentally moving them around, exploring how they would react in certain situations, thinking about what they like, what they hate and what keeps them up at night. I knew the subject, I even knew what the first sentence would be, but it took a while before I actually started writing.’
If you get stuck you sit, stare and think as long as you need to, but you keep working.
A lot of people, like myself, started writing a book a hundred times before but never made it beyond the third page. Anouk covered the lurking motivational pitfalls by committing herself to some strict rules. ‘I told a friend I would email him 5 new pages every Friday before 10 o’clock, and he would really be stringent about it. He would also provide me with very useful feedback. Another thing I learned is that writing isn’t all about inspiration. It’s about sitting down and typing. If you get stuck you sit, stare and think as long as you need to, but you keep working.’
Midgets and coke
While her book is about murder and crime, it can be extremely funny at times. The fluky figments on new characters or plot turns popping up in her head from time to time, add a touch of absurdism to the story. ‘At one point, I wanted to introduce a midget running a coke-lab from a villa in northern Amsterdam to the story. That didn’t really work out, but I still managed to get a midget in.’
Anouk’s debut book about drugs, sex and violence is written as straightforward as we know from her Filmfetish Friday posts, and will be on sale ‘everywhere’ for €15,- after the official release October 20th. You can read a preview (Dutch) of the first chapters at the Lebowski website, and you can pre-order the book with Selexyz, Athenaeum or others. Enjoy!Photography by Faye Lui
Sharing is caring!
Tweet