I haven’t written anything much new recently, which I suppose explains the withering of this technological creative shrub before it had even reached full maturity.

Actually, I have written The Road to Mitcham, a sequel to See Me, Feel Me. At just over 30,000 words, it counts as a short novel I think. It’s not on here yet, although it might be soon.

I’ve spent much time editing. If you think ‘editing’ simply means ‘removing words’, you’d be pretty close to the truth. The trick is to remove the right ones, as Eric Morcambe once told me. As a starter I removed the last sentence of each paragraph.

High Barnet is now 8,000 words shorter, which is a loss of over 8% of its bodyweight. To put that into perspective, it’s actually what happened to me in January, simply by not eating pork pies or croissants. However, High Barnet has also been remodelled a bit, which is more than I can say for myself. I made some of the boring bits (yes, people told me bits were boring – can you believe how rude they can be?) less boring, I think. Mostly by taking out words. But not exclusively.

Via Bridlington also went on a bit of a diet and has lost a similar number of words. To those of you thinking they might be exactly the same words as High Barnet, I’m disappointed.

My attendance at the London Writers’ Cafe self-help group has been very useful, actually, in deciding how to edit. They force you to read your work out loud to a room full of people. If that doesn’t concentrate the mind then I don’t know what does. I’m convinced that there have been improvements in both works.

Feel free to read and come to your own conclusions. As a celebration, I’ve added another chapter of each to this site. If anybody would like to read to rest of any of the books, just get in touch.

I changed the title of my second novel. I never liked the old one: Stories From a Faraway Place. It’s too long, makes it sound like it’s a fantasy book and I can’t type it without turning the middle ‘a’ of Faraway into a double.

When people asked me what this novel was called (and a few have), I felt self-conscious about saying it out loud. That had to be a sign. I would mumble it, but that made it worse because I’d have to say it again, and take exaggerated care over my diction. Never once did anybody remark what a good title I had.

What worries me most is that I’ve taken so long to change it. I’d like to think this milestone represents a watershed.

I feel more confident about Via Bridlington. It’s short and punchy, and mentions Bridlington. These are two very important factors in choosing a title for a novel. I do like the east coast of Yorkshire. The new title even relates, vaguely, to an actual exchange in the book itself (see The Mainland). Best of all, though, it immediately raises the question: why would anybody go anywhere via Bridlington? And…..

‘Have you read Via Bridlington?’

‘What’s that you’re reading?’
‘Via Bridlington.’

‘What’s your favourite book of all time?’
‘Via Bridlington.’

‘That’s mad! Have you ever been anywhere via Bridlington?’

All of these sentences sound better with the new title. It’s a winner.

But I still haven’t answered the question. Why would anybody go anywhere via Bridlington? It’s a logical question to ask, in a geographical sense, but it misses the point. Nobody goes anywhere via Bridlington. Well, mostly nobody. Look at it on any map, it doesn’t appear to be on the way to anywhere. But, despite that, there is a small subset of people who can’t do anything but go (wherever it is they’re going) via Bridlington. That subset can be easily defined. Think of them as “the people who pass through Bridlington on their way.” When you look at it that way, you’ll realise they have no choice.

As a celebration of this breakthrough in my own understanding of my own novel, I’ve published the next chapter off the rank, The Rain. Please feel free to read it.

Persisting with my annoying auto-didactory theme of pretending to ask myself questions and then answering them, I move on to what?

That is to say: what should my subject matter be?

That ought to be a simple enough question, didn’t it? Especially when you compare it with its compatriots: why is invariably the most complicated question of all; when, at least my when, is mostly about practical considerations, and as such almost insurmountable; how is extremely important, and I imagine defines an artist more than any other trait – it deserves much closer examination; who is superficially facile, but has enough scope to be easily overcomplicated. But, especially for somebody so desperate to be creative, almost to the point of not caring about the actual means of creative manifestation, what shouldn’t be a sticking point. I’m surprised about how much of one it is.

I’d like to think that the answer should be whatever you like. Should it not? That’s one of the major reasons it’s creative: the words, the setting, the personalities, the messages, the whole tableau, they all come from you; the creator, the artist.

And that’s where my problem arises. There’s too much. There are so many things to say. I think at least partly the skill lies in selecting the correct ones in the first place: what’s important? what’s funny? what’s poignant? Maybe more important to me at the moment is to consider: what will people actually want to read? Sometimes my judgement of that lets me down, possibly. I’m not in the position of writers like Ian McEwan and Haruki Murakami, who have earned a reputation which allows them to churn out pretty much whatever they like now. And they do. And if I needed proof that envy is an unattractive character trait, I’ve just given it to myself.

Maybe I ought to take some time to clear my mind of all these concerns, all the uncertainty, and just write what comes naturally? Good idea, and easier said than done. So many trains of thought are vying for my attention: a history of our football club; a sequel/prequel to Stories From a Faraway Place; a novel I’ve started and abandoned a couple of times called Under the Sun; there’s a short story of mine I’d love to turn into a novel; I want to write more short stories, as they’re so much fun. In the meantime, my notebook of ‘unformed ideas’, where I hide scenarios or sentences or paragraphs which I don’t want to die, continues to accumulate bulk.

Is this how it is for proper writers, the sort who make a living from it? At the darkest moments I conjure up a vision, inevitably wildly inaccurate, of a perfect, neat list of topics through which these sainted beings work methodically and free of stress. Other masochistic imaginings involve the writer nurturing and developing a single strand, like a potter at a wheel or a glassblower, slowly and gradually, into a magical final form. Once complete, they sit back, turn their back on their work and meditate peacefully until the muse visits next. Mind you, I often feel similar things about parents with only a single child.

The truth, of course, is bound to be something a little more varied. Some writers must work in that way, and good luck to them. Others will be a little more like me, a little more chaotic. To be honest, my whole life is carried out like that – I find it difficult to concentrate on a single thing at a single time. It would be stupid to imagine that nobody else operates in the same way.

Perhaps if when weren’t such a problem, then what would become less of one. If I knew I had unlimited dedicated writing time, I expect I’d be more relaxed about the order in which I attack everything. But currently I feel like a confused, hungry lion in the centre of a swarm of drowsy gazelles. Or, more philosophically, Buridan’s ass, but with a whole host of piles of food dotted around me at equal distances. Not only do I run the risk of starving to death, metaphorically speaking, while I procrastinate, but the literary world is missing out on my creations. This is an even larger catastrophe.

For now, though, and actually while I’ve been writing this post, I think I’ve settled on my next project. I’ll continue to report on progress, in between those accursed bursts of day-job. In the meantime I’ve posted another chapter of Stories From a Faraway Place. That means that over half of the novel is now on this site. I still consider it my best effort so far – I felt very comfortable within the community I invented there – and I continue to attempt to interest a publisher.

I spent a bit of time in the previous post considering why somebody might write. A more relevant question at this point might be not ‘why?’, but ‘when?’.

Chapter 23 (the penultimate chapter) of Survival of the Fittest is now published here (and on LinkedIn), but I must say that the very act of finishing the novel seems to have become a matter of survival itself. These last chapters are being forced out of me slowly and painfully.

The first half of this novel took around 4 months (I’d begun to write it before I began to put it online) to complete, and I’m now well past 8 months for the second half, and there still a chapter left to locate. It bothers me. What has changed?

I suppose it’s more difficult to finish a novel than it is to start one. You may begin with an extended outpouring of characters, action, emotions, wisdom and the like – I mean, why else would you feel the need to write a novel unless all that was sloshing around inside you somewhere? – but there comes a time when the well of inspiration starts to run dry (just ask Paul McCartney – circa 1970) and the writer is more reliant on his creative nous than a simple spewing forth of everything he knows. In other words, the plot has to be progressed, somehow, towards an appropriate ending. This, it appears, is more time-consuming. Even though I map out my entire work before starting to write in earnest (at least, that’s what I’ve done for all three so far), there’s always plenty of pulling together loose ends, and the actual ending never seems to be totally clear when I start.

Or is it because I’m less angry about it all now? Maybe that well, in this case at least, was filled with vitriol rather than inspiration? I have noticed the effect: it takes me longer, and more effort, to drag myself back to the position in which I found myself during the period of time the novel covers. I have to remind myself that, when I started, I was in that boat on the endless and unforgiving ocean and the memory of Colonel Watson et al was very raw. Now, I’m in a much less straitened condition.

Maybe the process of serialisation is to blame. I tend to attack the work in an episodic manner – get to the end of this chapter, I tell myself, then you can relax a bit. It leads to extended gaps between finishing one chapter and starting the next, but, worse than that, it can lead to publishing chapters with which I’m less than totally satisfied. I can always go back and improve it when I polish the completed work. Well, maybe I can. But maybe I won’t. Even if I do, I find myself regularly referring back to earlier chapters to check facts, words, devices and so on. And often I can’t even remember how the previous chapter ended up. It’s a combination of time and detachment: if I’ve just published three or four chapters I’m not totally happy about, am I as close, emotionally, to the whole thing as I should be? I do try to be, but I’m having to spend more and more time in reacquaintance mode than fluent creative mode.

But really, I know it’s not any of those. The problem is that I now have a job. A day job, I mean. Once for which I am given a salary. I held out great hopes, when I took the job, that it wouldn’t affect my output. I still have the evenings, I thought. I don’t watch telly any more, and there’s plenty of time in the day to make sure I can still churn out a chapter a week. Some hope. I suppose that’s just life – you can’t stay at it for 18 hours a day.

And, despite the fact that Survival of the Fittest is inspired by, in fact is a direct result of, what I experienced the last time I had a day job, getting it all down into words does appear to come much easier when there’s some distance. Everything seemed more ludicrous, less defensible, more demanding of ironic reporting when I was looking back from the outside. Being back inside has maybe taken the edge off a little bit.

So, I’m just one chapter away from reaching the end. I’m sure there will be a reappraisal of the work once I’ve finished, but it’ll be a good feeling to get there, over a year after starting. I have two more projects in the creative pipeline. One of them is mostly about football, or it might be about Greeks and the reaction to them of the people around them. I haven’t decided yet. The other features plenty of curry and Nick Drake songs. It was actually my first ever idea for a novel, and I’m desperate to see how it comes out.

But when will I find time?

What makes a writer write? I imagine the complete answer is different for each individual writer. Many of the reasons probably fall into the category of not wanting to do a proper job, craving attention, a genuine belief in the earth-shattering importance of the last thing they’ve thought about. But there will be a great patchwork swathe of unpredictable personal ones, too.

For me, it’s not big ideas that inspire. Almost everything I have written has grown from a tiny beginning, a fleeting moment that doesn’t just fleet by like the others, but leaves a mark. Clearly not every moment can fall into that category. Otherwise real life would be totally drowned out amongst developing and competing fantasies, and that would be dreadful. Wouldn’t it?

But. The moments that do have that special hook… Do they share a common characteristic? I think they probably do. Almost all those that I can identify as the roots of my work have something. It seems insufficient to say that they all have potential: of course they all have potential. But what I mean is that there is something about each of those moments that convinces me there’s more hiding behind what it’s showing me. As if it’s taunting me with its apparent innocence, daring me to probe further.

If I look at them in some detail, it’s still not immediately obvious. I consider some of the things I’ve written and follow their development back to inception: a peculiar dream, one I could remember vividly, for a change, once awake; a disturbing experience on a tube; a prosaic act of tenderness on a tourist excursion; a conversation I couldn’t believe I was hearing (that gave rise to the latest published story, Infidelity); a real life work situation I couldn’t believe I had found my way into; a dissonant phrase. Where’s the link? But they do all share a vital property: each one is inherently absurd. Or at least coloured with the absurd, or even just open to suggestions from the absurd.

I honestly have no idea, but I imagine it’s a very similar story for all creative types: songwriters, artists, comedians. Possibly not everybody is hooked by absurdity: maybe it’s inequality, or heroism or something more deeply emotional. I expect they all have their own type of moment. I might miss theirs, and vice versa. But that’s how it should be, isn’t it?

Much of my life’s amusement comes from considering what leads others to do the same. I might read something like A Poor Aunt Story or Super-Frog Saves Tokyo by Murakami, Graham Greene’s The Destructors or Kurt Vonnegut’s Jenny and marvel at the possibilities behind how they came to be. Not what the stories might mean at an emotional or artistic level: the loneliness, the irony, the impotence; but why they grew up in the form they did. I love to picture Roald Dahl explaining to a young child exactly what goes into a sausage, and then finding himself unable to staunch his flow of the absurd and writing Pig. In a similar fashion, when reading Waterland by Graham Swift, I couldn’t get out of my head the image of the author finding a half-uncovered old beer bottle somewhere alongside a fenland channel, and letting it grow until it became the masterpiece it did. I genuinely hope this is how those works were born.

I’ve always seen absurdity as I’ve gone about life. In fact, I don’t see an awful lot else. It can be a problem for me when I’m trying to be sensible. And I’m convinced that’s what has led me to write. If I let the madness go unreported, I’ve not fulfilled my function on the planet. I suppose the paradox is that writing is a very solitary occupation, and the raw material is out there, jostling with all those real people, relationships and conversations in the big, bad world that I don’t like. But life is all about striking the right balance. And it’s raining today. Today is a day to write.

I’ve just published chapter 12 of Survival of the Fittest. It’s here and on my LinkedIn site. According to my mapping out of the story (which I did in full before I started writing), this is the halfway point. There are 24 chapters, and they tend to be of similar length.

The actual events on which this work is based are becoming more and more distant in time and, probably, clouded in my memory. I am becoming increasingly thankful for the notes I made earlier in the year, when the idea first came to me, and even more increasingly wary of making any changes to the initially laid out structure or the underlying details. I feel I’ve reached a tipping point between reality and imagination and the question arises: do I approach the second half of the story faithfully (relatively speaking), much like I have done the opening half, or do I twist it to my own requirements? Literal or literary?

You could argue, of course, that I’ve already departed from the literal by fictionalising the tale: the situation has been transported to what is quite obviously a fantasy; readers are only allowed to see its reflection in a distorted mirror; the characters are just that – characters and not people. But the fact remains: all of this actually happened. And yes, I could barely believe it at the time. Some of the passages are written in the present tense, too. Those observations are less affected by the onward march of time. And just because I’ve chosen to turn it into the sort of sprawling metaphor that people mostly advise me to avoid, it doesn’t make the reality of it any less genuine.

The biggest difficulty I fight with, daily, is the worry that what I am writing is of no interest to anyone apart from myself. That, rather than the protection of the less-than-innocent, was my motivation behind initially deciding to fictionalise the whole thing. And it is that, once more, which gives me my present quandary. Must I tell it like it happened, or should I throw in a few more dramatic touches to suck in readers who might be finding the whole thing a little bit pointless?

I’ve not actually decided yet, and I’m not convinced I will, either. I know that the next chapter, as far as I’ve laid it out, tells yet another truthful episode within a fictitious setting. How things pan out after that is another matter entirely. I expect I won’t know until it happens. Life isn’t constantly engaging and worthwhile – must literature be? I think the answer to that is, probably, yes.

I listen to a lot of music. Ever since I was young I’ve been amazed at how those people write music and words; where they get them from; what makes them choose that particular combination of notes; how they turn their dredged-up thoughts into rhyming couplets and so on. Sometimes I do just let myself listen and enjoy, but normally I find myself thinking about the process of creation. You’d have thought that would ruin my enjoyment, but it doesn’t.

When I was 15 or so, I started a band and tried to write songs. We wrote a few, Dan and I. Some were total nonsense, some were a bit better and, just before we split for good, one was probably quite good. I wish I could remember more about it. I know it was about a colour TV, but that was probably mostly because that’s a good phrase to sing – Mark Knopfler found that out later.

So, what’s the point? Well, I’ve always considered short stories to be almost analogous to songs (pop – because of when I was born, although the same probably goes for contemporaries of Robert Schumann or Gustav Mahler). They can stand alone, like a single, or something published in a monthly magazine; or nominally together, an album or a collection of stories, whilst not necessarily being related in any way. A novel is more like a concept album or a symphony, but that’s another set of thoughts.

I’d written songs when I was a malodrous teenager. I’m now trying to find good starting points for short stories. It only took me around a year to put the two together. Nobody (except the certifiably die hard) will remember those efforts from nearly 30 years ago, so why not raid that creative larder and recycle them? They were (partly) my own output, after all, and could well contain snippets that I can use again now. I’m not stealing anything from anyone.

The result, the first result, is a story I’ve just written, called Looking For Jim. Its basis comes from The Nothing Song, of course, and writing the first paragraph took me all the way back to the room in Partridge Down where Dan and I argued silently for around an hour over the last 2 lines. If nothing else, I’ll always have that little reminiscent treat.

I think he got his way in the end.

Hello. I’m launching this site in August 2014. I hope you like it.

You can get a bit of background about me and my writing here.

Otherwise, if you want to dive straight into my work, I’ve organised it in short stories and novels.