Dreams of being front desk at Foyles.
Someone once said, “Everyone has a book inside them.” That may be the case, but it’s a fairly meaningless statement. You could equally claim “Everyone has a painting inside them,” and indeed, if someone left me for a couple of hours with a paint set and some blank sheets of paper I could probably produce something that would at least give me some satisfaction, and might even elicit a few “That’s nice” comments from friends and family. However the chances of it ending up on a wall in the Royal Academy are pretty small. That’s not the point: the point is that I had some fun doing it, and perhaps learnt a few things about myself and about the world along the way.
Many set out on the path of writing a novel in a similar vein. However at some point, perhaps a few months or a few tens of thousands of words later, the enormity of the task dawns. My father, who’s work did once decorate the walls of a Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy, could knock out a couple of paintings in an afternoon. By contrast, unless you are exceptionally talented, or have a great deal of spare time, it’s likely to be several years before your novel reaches a state that could remotely be described as “finished” in the sense that you have a manuscript of perhaps 70 or 80,000 words that, after several revisions and even rewrites, you really believe is the best you can make it. Continue reading
Another Roadside Attraction 