Dear sir
Looking back over my life, it is apparent to me that one person above all others shaped me as a writer. I draw my influences widely, I read everything I can get my hands on and I consider the mechanics and techniques I encounter, so in terms of author influences, there are many. However, I did not arrive in this world naturally able to think about how books are structured and how characterisation might take place in dialogue. I learned.
My sense of language as a magical thing, laden with potential, was not with me from the beginning. I learned how words could be deployed to express layers of meaning. I learned about nuance, subtext, and connotation. Memorably, I had opportunity to describe beans on toast as though it was the most expensive of cuisines, and my home as though it was a palace. I learned that perception and language run close together, shaping each other. Turning Macbeth into a tabloid-style newspaper report, I learned about misrepresentation and how it is possible to say something that is technically true whilst making it sound entirely different. I therefore also became sensitive to the language of advertising, politics and media, and the ways in which those are used to mislead.
During those same years, I learned how to look at an argument from both sides, and how to present an evidence-based idea. I learned how to take my gut reactions to something (in this case a text) and then look hard at it to figure out what caused me to have that reaction in the first place. Alongside this, all manner of technical, structural things entered my understanding, and I became somewhat less awful at spelling.
Through most of my teenage schooling, I was blessed when it came to studying English. I went through with the same teacher. He inspired me, and gave me the tools and technical skills that allowed me to carry on in this direction.
In terms of what I write, there was one enormous input, in that he was critical of speculative fiction and ‘rabbit out of hat’ solutions. I remain drawn to the speculative, but that has stayed with me. Most of the time I do not write stories with magical ‘out of the hat’ solutions to them, unless I’m playing it for laughs. A major plot point in the second volume of Hopeless Maine actually hangs on this unwillingness of mine to use magic as the get-out clause for all things. I’ll use speculative features to set up a situation, but favour human solutions to problems. It’s a direct consequence of wanting to create something that this one, particularly inspiring teacher might approve of.
Teachers are not having a good time of it here in the UK. Everyone I know working in the teaching profession is struggling with the constantly moving goalposts, the pressures put on them from on high, the constant messing with the system, the endless demand that they do more, for less. We do not value our teachers properly, as a nation. The vast majority of us who go on to do anything in life will do so in part because someone else taught us essential skills. Someone taught us to read and count, someone shaped our thinking, inspired us to take interest in a subject, helped us get started. Who I am and how I am has been shaped in part by the people who taught me, and for that I am deeply grateful. I had a lot of good teachers along the way, and some exceptional ones.
There is no repaying that debt. But at least I get to say thank you. John, I would not have been able to do this had you not been a part of my life.
