Why I... write
"Losing yourself is a skill you need to learn"
I wrote my first novel when I was a student – probably why I only got a 2:2. Like all my fiction, it was based around a concept, a big idea. Then starting a business and a family got in the way.
At 43, I realised I was depressed because I wasn’t writing. I was struggling to think. My GP wasn’t any help but a business coach asked me what was missing in my life; what I wasn’t doing. It dawned on me that the answer was writing.
I started immediately, taking Wednesdays off work to write. Six months later my muzzy head was gone and I’ve kept up that writing day for for seven years.
I store up thoughts all week and on Wednesdays write them up in a cabin in my garden. It gives my brain something to focus on away from everything else. It’s essential to me.
To be creative you need fresh mental energy. It only comes when you don't allow your diary to get in the way. Turn off Twitter, turn off distractions. Allow yourself to wallow in your ideas. You need to be absorbed in your world. Losing yourself is a skill you need to learn. You have to create a hallowed space.
It feels good when you write 2,000 words in a day without noticing. Conversely, when you know you’ll be deleting them during the next rewrite, that's the worst feeling. But you need to go through the worst to get to the best.
At its best, writing makes me feel stimulated. And, when someone has read something and gets it, I’m thrilled to pieces. It’s strange; everybody thinks that when someone they know writes a book – it's going to be rubbish. They just presume.
Criticism of my books is fine but it would be better if people talked about the central idea, not the characterisation or technical flaws.
Ambitions and goals are two very different things: my ambition is to have a book made into a movie. But I have no goal, other than to not make an idiot of myself.
You only get any good at writing fiction in two ways: reading and writing. If you think you’d like to do it, just do it. No one is stopping you. it costs nothing. Although, getting published, well that’s a long story.
My writing influences? Ian Fleming, not for his writing but because he didn’t start writing properly until his 40s. Spike Milligan, for only ever being himself. Louis De Bernieres, a great storyteller. Michael Chabon for a barrage of brilliant one liners.