F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 23

January 27, 2018

Death at the Seaside by F.R. Jameson

My new novella, ‘Death at the Seaside’ is published today and is FREE on Amazon this weekend. Just click here and you’ll be taken straight to it.


Here’s my introduction.


[image error]FREE TODAY!!!

I first wrote ‘Death at the Seaside’ in 2002.


Back then I was watching a lot of ‘The Sopranos’, and quite clearly was inspired by an overweight man with criminal tendencies and an eye for the ladies. Although in my head the protagonist, Larry Castle looks a lot more like Ray Winstone than James Gandolfini.


Once finished though, I couldn’t figure out what to do with it and so it sat in a box for a long while.


Then in 2008, right after ‘The Wannabes’ first came out, I decided to rewrite it.


I can remember when I read it back then being quite disappointed by it, my skills as a writer had improved in the meantime and it now seemed shapeless and amateurish. But I charged into it and reshaped and rewrote pretty much the whole thing. Including one memorable afternoon, where I was out to meet friends in Regents Park, I got there early and sat and wrote in the bright sunshine for a couple of hours of bliss.


But back then there still weren’t a lot of avenues for a novella, particularly as I didn’t really have a publishing contract. So even though the story was in a much better state, back into the box it went.


It stayed with me though, always lurking at the back of my mind as something I really needed to finish.


“What’s it about?” I hear you ask.


Well, here’s a little synopsis:


Larry Castle has gone to the seaside for a relaxing break, to maybe pick up a girl or two before his gorgeous film star mistress joins him. But a chance encounter leaves Castle reeling. There’s a possibility someone knows his darkest secret. And if that’s the case, then Castle is going to have to do something about it. No matter what it costs him.


It’s a dark tale, but even if I say so myself, it’s a damn good tale and I knew it would be a shame if it were never published.


Now though the landscape had changed dramatically, I have embraced the life of an indie author and my imagination is all which limits publishing opportunities.


As such I pulled out the manuscript from its box once more, and visited Larry Castle once again. To be honest I was expecting to be disappointed, but instead I found myself enjoying the story, gripped by the story – even surprised by some of the nuances. Of course, it needed some work, and I did rewrite chunks of it last year, but finally I have it finished and I’m really proud of it.


So here it is, sixteen years after I started it, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you – at long last – ‘Death at the Seaside’.


 


Once again, it is completely FREE on Amazon this weekend. Just click here.

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Published on January 27, 2018 04:22

January 26, 2018

How to Write Quickly – part 2

[image error]


If you’re going to write fast, if you’re going to carve yourself out half an hour every day (or simply aim for five hundred words, whichever you choose) then you’re going to have to have a fairly sure grasp of what you’re going to write.


Before you pick up the pen or switch on your computer, you’re going to need to know exactly where your starting point is and exactly where you want to be at the end of that burst of writing.


You have to have it all planned out beforehand, otherwise you’ll soon find yourself crashed in a ditch. After all, even with half an hour stolen from the day that isn’t a long time in the scheme of things, and you want to make it count. You don’t want your story to career around aimlessly.


Unless you’re writing a stream of consciousness, then you obviously have an over-arching plot. You’ll have character arcs, themes you’ll want to play with. You might even have the whole book broken down chapter by chapter.


But now you’ll need more. You’ll need those chapters broken down into small enough sections that you can easily get from beginning to end of that section in your allotted time.


You need a target you can aim for and hit every time.


But don’t worry, this isn’t as finickity or time consuming as it might sound.


All it really it involves good old-fashioned thinking.


And that’s fine.


As if you’re in the midst of writing a book, then you’re going to be thinking about that book a lot of the time (most of the time!) anyway. But as well as thinking about things you’ve already written and need to change, or parts you’re excited to write about in the future, you’re also going to have to think about – and think about quite intently – what the next half hour’s writing is going to bring you.


Fortunately, as it’s thinking, it’s something you can do at the same time as other tasks. You can think in downtime at your job or when you walk out to get lunch. Obviously you’ve got to give over a huge amount of headspace to write a book anyway, so you should be able to manage it.


Then when you finish your half an hour’s writing that day, when you’ve got to the point you wanted to reach, you have to move immediately on to thinking about what you want to achieve in the next half hour. Where you want to get to, what you want do. As the days go on this will become easier to do, you’ll even conjure up sentences you want to write, shape paragraphs in your head.


I tend to now end one burst of writing by scribbling down the first couple of sentences of the next section along. So, they’re fixed in my head, so I’m already working on it.


As when you get into this habit, over time you’ll find that when you sit down for your half an hour a lot of the writing is done. You already have mapped in your head what you want to write and you sit down and write it. You’re not flailing around in the dark.


I’ll try to go into further detail next week,  but writing for half an hour a day and making it count means you have to plan that half hour out. But that’s fine as it just requires spending some more time in one’s own head, and for a writer that’s pretty much our favourite place to be, isn’t it?


 


Over the last year I’ve taught myself how to write fast, and I’m trying to pass on these lessons. If there’s any questions you want to ask, just leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to address it.

In the meantime here are my thoughts/lessons from the previous weeks:

Intro 1

Intro 2

How to write quickly 1


 

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Published on January 26, 2018 07:10

Me, Planning the next half hour, in 2018

[image error]


If you’re going to write fast, if you’re going to carve yourself out half an hour every day (or simply aim for five hundred words, whichever you choose) then you’re going to have to have a fairly sure grasp of what you’re going to write.


Before you pick up the pen or switch on your computer, you’re going to need to know exactly where your starting point is and exactly where you want to be at the end of that burst of writing.


You have to have it all planned out beforehand, otherwise you’ll soon find yourself crashed in a ditch. After all, even with half an hour stolen from the day that isn’t a long time in the scheme of things, and you want to make it count. You don’t want your story to career around aimlessly.


Unless you’re writing a stream of consciousness, then you obviously have an over-arching plot. You’ll have character arcs, themes you’ll want to play with. You might even have the whole book broken down chapter by chapter.


But now you’ll need more. You’ll need those chapters broken down into small enough sections that you can easily get from beginning to end of that section in your allotted time.


You need a target you can aim for and hit every time.


But don’t worry, this isn’t as finickity or time consuming as it might sound.


All it really it involves good old-fashioned thinking.


And that’s fine.


As if you’re in the midst of writing a book, then you’re going to be thinking about that book a lot of the time (most of the time!) anyway. But as well as thinking about things you’ve already written and need to change, or parts you’re excited to write about in the future, you’re also going to have to think about – and think about quite intently – what the next half hour’s writing is going to bring you.


Fortunately, as it’s thinking, it’s something you can do at the same time as other tasks. You can think in downtime at your job or when you walk out to get lunch. Obviously you’ve got to give over a huge amount of headspace to write a book anyway, so you should be able to manage it.


Then when you finish your half an hour’s writing that day, when you’ve got to the point you wanted to reach, you have to move immediately on to thinking about what you want to achieve in the next half hour. Where you want to get to, what you want do. As the days go on this will become easier to do, you’ll even conjure up sentences you want to write, shape paragraphs in your head.


I tend to now end one burst of writing by scribbling down the first couple of sentences of the next section along. So, they’re fixed in my head, so I’m already working on it.


As when you get into this habit, over time you’ll find that when you sit down for your half an hour a lot of the writing is done. You already have mapped in your head what you want to write and you sit down and write it. You’re not flailing around in the dark.


I’ll try to go into further detail next week,  but writing for half an hour a day and making it count means you have to plan that half hour out. But that’s fine as it just requires spending some more time in one’s own head, and for a writer that’s pretty much our favourite place to be, isn’t it?


 


Over the last year I’ve taught myself how to write fast, and I’m trying to pass on these lessons. If there’s any questions you want to ask, just leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to address it.

In the meantime here are my thoughts/lessons from the previous weeks:

Intro 1

Intro 2

How to write quickly 1


 

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Published on January 26, 2018 07:10

January 24, 2018

Crimson Peak (2015)

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Making a version of Du Maurier’s REBECCA with the gothic ramped up should be the height of futility. It’s like remaking THE GODFATHER and aiming for even more mafia-y, or SPEED in a way much more fast bus-y. Surely REBECCA – both novel and Hitchcock film – are plenty gothic enough. But here we are, the young innocent bride, the older husband with a past who’s stolen her heart and the older lady who is immovable part and parcel of the remote old house they live in. It’s REBECCA alright, but this time with the gothic turned up to 11.


Mia Wasikowska is a young bookish lady who meets Tom Hiddleston and his sister, Jessica Chastain in Buffalo, New York. He wins her affections despite the genteel poverty of his condition, and after the death of her father whisks her over to England and the large family house in Cumberland (presumably not far from the sausage factory) but all is not quite what it seems.


Most of the films I write about on this blog are Hammer Horrors. I’m a big fan. And this really does feel like the kind of film Hammer could have made if it had more ambition and a bigger budget. This is a quality Hammer Horror production, one that’s gripping and scary in equal measure, and understands that having adult themes doesn’t just mean titillation.


The performances are great, it looks absolutely fantastic, and if the script is maybe a little predictable then that’s fine. I guessed the direction it was going, and I was more than happy to have it take me there. I really wouldn’t have thought that REBECCA with the gothic accentuated was needed or achievable, but I should have trusted that in Guillermo del Toro’s hands, anything is possible.


 


None of them could really be described as gothic, but they’re damn good nonetheless. There’s a free collection of my short stories available here.


[image error]Available now!
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Published on January 24, 2018 07:01

January 22, 2018

You Bet Your Life by Stuart M. Kaminsky

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Of the first three Toby Peters novels, this is the one which feels least satisfying. For those who don’t know (or don’t recall the last time I reviewed one of these) Toby Peters is a 1940s Hollywood detective whose cases take him to the highs and lows of tinsel-town. So far, we’ve had a case involving Errol Flynn, one with Judy Garland and now we have The Marx Brothers. But even though I spent my adolescence obsessively watching ‘Horse feathers’, ‘Monkey Business’, ‘Duck Soup’, this one is nowhere near as much fun as its predecessors.


For starters it’s set in cold Chicago rather than hot LA, and the fish out of water aspect soon gets tired. Then there’s the fact that Toby Peters has flu for most of it, which makes it a far lower energy affair. While the Marxes themselves are portrayed as much less funny offstage than on – with even Groucho coming across sour rather than witty.


It’s not a bad book by any means. There’s tough guy shenanigans and an appropriately twisty plot, it just feels distinctly average. Hopefully service will return to normal when Toby gets home.


 


Fancy reading some of my short stories for free? Just follow this link.


[image error]Available now!
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Published on January 22, 2018 06:48

January 19, 2018

How to Write Quickly – part 1

[image error]


If you’re feeling frustrated by how much writing you’re getting done, if you want to write fast – or at least, aim to write faster than you do now – then I’m afraid you’re going to have to smash your existing writing routine apart.


To be blunt, you need to take it outside and bring a brick down on its head.


Since if your productivity isn’t all you’d wish it to be, then clearly whatever you’re doing isn’t working and you’re going to have to change it.


Let me tell you my story.


(Okay, mine is the only experience I know, so I’m going to use myself as a case study every time I write about this. Yes, this might come across as ridiculously solipsistic, but you’re going to have to bear with me.)


For a while – with a full-time job Monday to Friday – I tried to just write on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. To give myself a routine where I stole myself away and wrote for an hour or two both days of the weekend. Occasionally I would try to do some work of a workday evening as well, but mostly it was those afternoons.


The problem was that writing for two days and then a large break meant I couldn’t get any real rhythm going. It meant that each time I came back to the story I was somewhat disconnected from it. My progress was halting right until the point it halted.


On my computer are dozens of stories that I started but could never finish.


I knew I had a problem. Obviously, I knew I had a problem, but I hadn’t yet had my moment of pain.


Then I reached the threshold beyond which I could take no more.


I knew I had to do something.


So, I broke my writing routine.


One morning on the train to work I took out a notepad and started to scribble down a short story. Hitherto I hadn’t really written more than notes on trains. I thought the sounds of the people around me would be an annoyance, I couldn’t guarantee that I’d have a seat, even the motion of the train I didn’t think would be conducive to writing. Also, there was the fact that the journey was only a twenty minutes/half-hour window, and how much could I really do with that?


[image error]


But that morning I started scribbling and what I thought was just going to be a sketch, morphed into a short story, and by the end of the week into a novel. You see, when I was determined enough to do it, I realised I could write on trains. That I could make use of my commute and claim that time back.


Since I spent roughly an hour on trains each day, that gave me a whole five hours a week in which to write. Five hours when I could shut myself off and concentrate on the words, become enthused about writing again.


[image error]


I was writing every day, making sure I used every journey, and because I was writing every day my confidence in myself as a writer increased. Suddenly it felt like I could finish something again!


Swiftly it didn’t matter if the person next to me was braying away on the phone. It didn’t even matter if I didn’t have a seat, I could just find a place to lean and read.


I’d broken my old routine, given myself a new space and time to write and suddenly I was flying.


[image error]


Now, I know what you’re thinking, you don’t get the train to work.


You drive to work.


Or you don’t actually commute.


Obviously, your experience is not going to be identical to mine, but if you want to write faster, you are going to have to find – no, you are going to have to carve out – more time in the day with which to write.


Ideally, you are going to have to carve out more time every day in which to write.


Don’t wait for fabled inspiration, or for your mood to be right. You have to be able to sit down and write in your notepad (or on your tablet or laptop) when the allotted time comes.


If it requires getting up half an hour earlier or staying up half an hour later, then that’s what you’ll have to do. If you have to sacrifice the cup of tea you enjoy in front of the TV, or cut back on your favourite TV shows, then that’s what you’ll have to do.


Presuming that you don’t have lots of spare hours in every day where you do nothing, then you are going to have to sacrifice something to get yourself to the point where you can write quickly.


(I love to read on trains. It’s one of the great little pleasures of my life. I barely get to read on trains anymore.)


Other guides I’ve read talk about aiming for 500 words a day in the first instance, and that’s great, but I prefer to think of it in terms of time. If you can steal yourself twenty or thirty minutes a day, then you will easily hit that 500 words. You will quite possibly do more than that, maybe even a thousand.


If it’s a first draft you’re writing, don’t be precious about it. Just crash through the story, get the characters down, sort out their motivation. Don’t worry too much about the prose – that can all be rewritten and gone over later. (It’s a first draft, after all.) Carve yourself out twenty minutes a day, try to claim that time every day and before you know it you’ll really be in a really good writing rhythm. You’ll feel the momentum of it pushing you on. You’ll feel the exhilaration of it and very swiftly your story, novella, novel will start taking real and solid shape.


Do you struggle with writing fast? Any comments or queries you’d like me to address, please leave them below. I have a rough idea where I’m going with this, I know what points I want to address, but you may have an issue I haven’t thought of and maybe I can offer a pearl of wisdom.


Fancy a FREE FRJ short story collection? There’s one available here!


[image error]Available Now!

 

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Published on January 19, 2018 07:21

Me, Breaking the Routine, in 2018

[image error]


If you’re feeling frustrated by how much writing you’re getting done, if you want to write fast – or at least, aim to write faster than you do now – then I’m afraid you’re going to have to smash your existing writing routine apart.


To be blunt, you need to take it outside and bring a brick down on its head.


Since if your productivity isn’t all you’d wish it to be, then clearly whatever you’re doing isn’t working and you’re going to have to change it.


Let me tell you my story.


(Okay, mine is the only experience I know, so I’m going to use myself as a case study every time I write about this. Yes, this might come across as ridiculously solipsistic, but you’re going to have to bear with me.)


For a while – with a full-time job Monday to Friday – I tried to just write on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. To give myself a routine where I stole myself away and wrote for an hour or two both days of the weekend. Occasionally I would try to do some work of a workday evening as well, but mostly it was those afternoons.


The problem was that writing for two days and then a large break meant I couldn’t get any real rhythm going. It meant that each time I came back to the story I was somewhat disconnected from it. My progress was halting right until the point it halted.


On my computer are dozens of stories that I started but could never finish.


I knew I had a problem. Obviously, I knew I had a problem, but I hadn’t yet had my moment of pain.


Then I reached the threshold beyond which I could take no more.


I knew I had to do something.


So, I broke my writing routine.


One morning on the train to work I took out a notepad and started to scribble down a short story. Hitherto I hadn’t really written more than notes on trains. I thought the sounds of the people around me would be an annoyance, I couldn’t guarantee that I’d have a seat, even the motion of the train I didn’t think would be conducive to writing. Also, there was the fact that the journey was only a twenty minutes/half-hour window, and how much could I really do with that?


[image error]


But that morning I started scribbling and what I thought was just going to be a sketch, morphed into a short story, and by the end of the week into a novel. You see, when I was determined enough to do it, I realised I could write on trains. That I could make use of my commute and claim that time back.


Since I spent roughly an hour on trains each day, that gave me a whole five hours a week in which to write. Five hours when I could shut myself off and concentrate on the words, become enthused about writing again.


[image error]


I was writing every day, making sure I used every journey, and because I was writing every day my confidence in myself as a writer increased. Suddenly it felt like I could finish something again!


Swiftly it didn’t matter if the person next to me was braying away on the phone. It didn’t even matter if I didn’t have a seat, I could just find a place to lean and read.


I’d broken my old routine, given myself a new space and time to write and suddenly I was flying.


[image error]


Now, I know what you’re thinking, you don’t get the train to work.


You drive to work.


Or you don’t actually commute.


Obviously, your experience is not going to be identical to mine, but if you want to write faster, you are going to have to find – no, you are going to have to carve out – more time in the day with which to write.


Ideally, you are going to have to carve out more time every day in which to write.


Don’t wait for fabled inspiration, or for your mood to be right. You have to be able to sit down and write in your notepad (or on your tablet or laptop) when the allotted time comes.


If it requires getting up half an hour earlier or staying up half an hour later, then that’s what you’ll have to do. If you have to sacrifice the cup of tea you enjoy in front of the TV, or cut back on your favourite TV shows, then that’s what you’ll have to do.


Presuming that you don’t have lots of spare hours in every day where you do nothing, then you are going to have to sacrifice something to get yourself to the point where you can write quickly.


(I love to read on trains. It’s one of the great little pleasures of my life. I barely get to read on trains anymore.)


Other guides I’ve read talk about aiming for 500 words a day in the first instance, and that’s great, but I prefer to think of it in terms of time. If you can steal yourself twenty or thirty minutes a day, then you will easily hit that 500 words. You will quite possibly do more than that, maybe even a thousand.


If it’s a first draft you’re writing, don’t be precious about it. Just crash through the story, get the characters down, sort out their motivation. Don’t worry too much about the prose – that can all be rewritten and gone over later. (It’s a first draft, after all.) Carve yourself out twenty minutes a day, try to claim that time every day and before you know it you’ll really be in a really good writing rhythm. You’ll feel the momentum of it pushing you on. You’ll feel the exhilaration of it and very swiftly your story, novella, novel will start taking real and solid shape.


Do you struggle with writing fast? Any comments or queries you’d like me to address, please leave them below. I have a rough idea where I’m going with this, I know what points I want to address, but you may have an issue I haven’t thought of and maybe I can offer a pearl of wisdom.


Fancy a FREE FRJ short story collection? There’s one available here!


[image error]Available Now!

 

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Published on January 19, 2018 07:21

January 17, 2018

The Other Side of Silence by Philip Kerr

[image error]


There’s always been a touch of Philip Marlowe to Philip Kerr’s, Bernie Gunther. After all, are there really any meaner streets for some men to walk down than Nazi Berlin? They’re both world-weary cynics with a good eye for the simile. That comparison is really played on by the setting of ‘The Other Side of Silence’. The idle rich of the post-war French Riviera are not far removed from the idle rich of Beverly Hills, except when Marlowe walks up the long driveway of a mansion he finds General Sternwood, Gunther meets no less than Somerset Maughan.


It’s 1956 and Gunther is working under a fake name as a hotel concierge in one of the finest hotels of the French Riviera. He was never a real Nazi, but is painfully aware that the authorities want him as such. When a real Nazi shows up the two men recognise each other instantly and thus begins a tale of blackmail, spy-craft, double cross, The Cambridge Five and the odd incidental murder. All of it centred around the great man of letters, Maughan. I’ll be honest, I’ve never read a biography of Maughan and only know the brief outline of his life, but Kerr does make him a most entertaining if catty figure.


It’s really hard to write about the ending of a novel without giving away massive spoilers, but suffice to say that when Gunther does what he does to save his neck, I was both carried along with it and not sure I really believed it. It was brilliant, but maybe too brilliant – so brilliant that I couldn’t help but wonder at the plausibility of him being able to pull it off. But such was the fun I had reading this book (and every Bernie Gunther story, to be fair) that I’m happy to forgive it. After all, it’s hard to bear a grudge when you’ve been so thoroughly entertained.


 


Fancy receiving some odd, entertaining and scary stories for FREE? My collection, ‘Something Went Wrong & Other Strange Tales’ is available now!


[image error]Available now!
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Published on January 17, 2018 06:53

January 15, 2018

Doctor Who Reviews (Extra) – Doom Coalition 3

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‘Doom Coalition 3’ is the best of the series so far. It all hangs together quite well, The Eighth Doctor and River (finally) have some spicy interchanges and Helen Sinclair is actually given something to do.


Yet despite that, it still feels somewhat lacking.


At this point saying that it’s the best of the ‘Doom Coalition’ series so far feels like damning with faint praise. It’s not that it’s bad as such, but it struggles to get above average, and when it does poke its head above the parapet the furthest it will go is tentatively into the average to good category.


Part of the problem remains Helen Sinclair, who is a companion shoe-horned in to have another voice in the Tardis crew, but is still someone who just hangs around with no real character or development at all. Yes, for the first time in the series she has a proper meaty story, but it still goes nowhere. I don’t blame Hattie Morahan’s portrayal, as I think she’s doing the best she can, but the fact remains that she’s been given virtually nothing to work with.


The main issue though is the stories. I listened to all four in the last two weeks and as I’m typing this I’m struggling to remember what happened in any of them. Again, they’re not bad – the performances are good, the jokes are often good, the dialogue has moments of near sparkling – but again they’re not great. When the only reason I can remember a story is that I thought a villain called The Clocksmith is more suited to Adam West’s Batman to face, then it’s not a great sign.


I’m still enthused by the fourth boxset (I’ve paid for it, so I have to be), but I remain indifferent to ‘Doom Coalition’ as a whole. Whereas I was gripped by Molly O’Sullivan and the whole ‘Dark Eyes’ saga, this feels like insipid fare in comparison.


 


Fancy a set of strange, uncanny and terrifying tales by yours truly? ‘Something Went Wrong & Other Strange Tales’ is available now!


[image error]FREE to download today!

 

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Published on January 15, 2018 06:41

January 12, 2018

How to Write Quickly – intro 2

[image error]


Jim Kukral of the ‘Sell More Books Show’ (which I listen to, along with ‘The Creative Penn’, as my two writing podcasts [I am aware that other writing podcasts are available]), has a point he regularly repeats about how a person needs to reach the proper level of pain. That only when you’re at the level where you can take no more will you truly spur yourself on.


Once you get to that point: the moment in your life where you can’t take anymore, then – and only then – will you change things. Then you’ll start rearranging your life so it puts you in the best place to succeed, the best place to break the chains which are holding you back.


To have reached that level of pain is probably the most important thing you need to write like I do.


[image error] Pain


Trust me, I know.


For a long time my pain level wasn’t high enough. The life I had was perfectly fine, and those bits of it that weren’t didn’t hurt me enough that I’d do anything drastic over. I had my girlfriend who became my fiancée who became my wife, we had our little house and eventually we had our baby. Okay, my career (such as it was) had stalled, but that was fine as I had never taken a great deal of pleasure from work. What had filled me with passion was writing, but for the while that had gone on the back burner as I wasn’t finishing anything I was writing – because I wasn’t motivated enough to finish anything I was writing – and so I just let things drift along.


What changed was having my baby girl in my forties and seeing my life mapped out – the next twenty or thirty years in a plodding job as a corporate drone. What changed me was the thought I’d get to retirement age with the feeling that somehow I’d let things slip by. What changed me was the desire to make my daughter proud, so that she (hopefully) doesn’t stare at me one day with slight pity as her old man is just a corporate drone who let a lot of life slip him by.


I started hurting, the kind of hurt which kept me up at night with worry. What was I going to do? What could I even do? And in my anxious self-pity, was there anything I could do?


[image error] Pain


That’s how bad things were. I genuinely wondered if I was just trapped on my path with no exits whatsoever. That wasn’t the case, that is never the case. At the risk of sounding like the most cliched self-help book, it is never to late to help yourself, you just have to want to do it.


You really, really have to want to do it.


Okay, as parents we were past the first three months and so were sleeping again though the night, but we still had a very young baby who needed time and attention. I also had a full-time job I had to devote myself to. There wasn’t much time in the day. But still, I had to find the hours and the willpower to do what I had completely failed to do in the run-up to her birth and write and finish something.


I had reached the point of pain where I could take no more.


[image error] Pain


And if you’re not at that point – if you’re still someone who picks up and puts down what they write willy-nilly – then this will be hard for you.


As what I do is intense, and if you’re not driven each day by a desire to change your life, if will be really, really difficult.


 


Fancy reading a collection of short and gripping short stories. There’s one available here.


[image error]Available Now!
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Published on January 12, 2018 06:30