I often find writing stuff down helps me compartmentalize in my head, as well as release thoughts from that grey matter up top so that order is restored and I can focus on the job at hand…whatever job that might be.
Equally, on days when I don’t write, I’ll beat myself up knowing that I should be.
Imagine putting yourself under that much pressure. It is like setting yourself homework forever.
I call myself a reluctant writer, but this isn’t true. I’m reluctant until I sit down in front of that screen and start tapping away at the keys, then I don’t want to be anywhere else. In front of that screen is where worlds are created, people spring to life, and I really do feel fulfilled, content.
Getting myself to sit in front of that screen is another matter.
I’m the ultimate procrastinator.
I’ll polish lightbulbs and hoover the cat before sitting down and getting some words in. It’s madness, to have this sort of relationship with something I love to do.
Storytelling is king. Words matter. Stories matter. They are a source of entertainment for some, and can act as therapy for both the author and reader. Stories matter because they bring people together. It is the cornerstone of civilization. Without stories we’d still be swinging in the trees, we really would. Stories are passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, creating a tapestry of human history. Without stories we would always live in the present having learned nothing from what once was. With stories we can travel through time, experience the lives and thoughts of others, expand our minds and pass ideas on to the next person.
I write stories to empty my head. I like being an empty-head, it is the only time I’m really at peace. To know those stories provide entertainment to others, fill their heads, give them ideas, maybe even sometimes a smile or an unexpected burst of laughter… well, that’s just the icing on the cake, and the real power of telling stories. Mostly though, writing stories has always been my escape.
A couple of years ago I was going through a rough time in my life. In the space of two months I’d gone from the owner of a business and settled in a four year long relationship, to a jobless, single, full-time dad having to move house to something more affordable.
I hated my life.
And with little to do during the hours of nine to three thirty while the kids were at school, I’d spend my time in the pub, picking the kids up from school half cut, and putting on a sober dad act while sobering up and going through the evening routines of making dinner, helping the kids with homework…
Half past eight every night was the killer.
Once I’d said goodnight to the kids twenty times, and they’d come down for their twelfth drink, once I was the only one awake in this new house, that was when things were hard and when I felt the loneliest.
I’d spend my evenings watching rom-coms and chick-flicks, falling asleep on the couch and waking up in the dead of night disorientated, not sure where I was, until everything hit me at once and I’d head off up to bed.
For three months this was my routine, putting on that fun, carefree dad mask for the kids and falling deeper into a hidden depression. Then one day while the kids were at school, I opened up my laptop and wrote about all of this. It was hard getting it down, I had so many thoughts, questions, sought so many answers which I would ultimately never get.
I kept on writing because it is always something I have done since penning my first novel at 15 years old. The words, once out of my head and onto the screen in front of me, stayed there. This became my therapy. Instead of the pub during school hours, I’d rush home and empty my head onto the laptop screen.
Something happened.
That depression went away because I wasn’t reminiscing and going over and over things constantly. I found that mask I wore for the children wasn’t slipping once they were in bed at night. It became my face. The writing did that. That transference of shit from brain to screen brought me out of my self-pity.
Oh poor fucking me.
So someone broke up with you and you had to move house and find a new job, so fucking what?
One afternoon, as I walked the kids home from school, I saw a piece of pink paper on our street a few doors down from the house. Upon inspection, I found it was a lottery ticket for the coming Wednesday’s draw. No, it didn’t win, this isn’t that kind of story, but finding that ticket did something far more valuable. It made me ask myself, “What if.”
What if that ticket had won?
Imagine.
And I did.
In the next four days, I wrote a 30,000 word novella about a guy down on his luck winning the lottery and I called it Mr. Millionaire.
All those years I’d spent writing novels and then I’d stopped because of life, kids, work etc.
Writing Mr. Millionaire reintroduced me to an old friend, my muse, and no sooner had I finished MM, I moved onto another book, a prequel to a time travel novel I’d penned years earlier.
Ever since I was 15 years old, grounded because I’d gotten stoned in school and so not allowed anything other than to read books, I’d written, immersing myself in the stories I was telling, and now I had that super power back.
The next book I started, I’d already done the groundwork for. It was something I didn’t have the ending to, because I’d been living it. I started to turn my journal into a novel. It was raw, honest, unapologetic, and handing the chapters I’d already written out to a few of my readers, discovered it was apparently funny too.
This chunk of scribbles which had helped me get over myself was the makings of a rom-com, Rob Radcliffe style. I now knew where I’d place it, and having just embarked upon the trials and tribulations of online dating in real life, I knew I had something of a plot. I didn’t have the ending yet, that would come later because I was still living the story as I wrote it.
That book was finished a few years ago and releasing it to a select few of my trusted readers, like every book I’ve written, I didn’t really know if it was any good. Turns out they loved it, and after figuring out I could put it in my Lad-Lit series, I now had a new problem.
My Lad-Lit series is chick-lit’s naughty younger brother, Bridget Jones if she was called Barry, my version of that sort of genre. The series follows four friends through their lives. In each book I have written these characters at the age I’ve been when writing. The series has essentially followed me through my life from when I was 18 years old (I’m 42 as I write this blog post).
My debut novel Meat Market did quite well when first released in 2015, and I found readers who demanded a sequel, which they got, as well as a prequel and a threequel too.
But.
I’d left book three (Barman) on a cliffhanger which couldn’t be explained away in just a few paragraphs at the beginning of this new book I had for the series, and had called Tindered. I needed to write another book in between Barman and Tindered.
It took five years to write that in between book, just because I never really wanted to write it in the first place. I had to force an idea and that’s just not how my books usually manifest.
While not writing this book which took five fucking years to complete, I penned a number of other books, but this book 4 in the series needed to be written so that I could continue with the series and release Tindered.
Eventually an idea found itself and I’m pretty proud of the story which followed. Writing book 4 was messy, I was scrambling around in the dark searching for my Muse, and he eventually showed up, thankfully. It was a means to an end because I wanted book 5, my journal which I eventually named Tindered to be out there in the world.
Everyone goes through stuff in their lives, the only difference when you’re a writer is that you can chronicle it, pass it down, flip the dark times and turn them into something which will make others smile and sometimes even laugh.
Story is king.
Words are therapy.
Without the stories, we’re still just apes swinging in the trees.
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