Okay, so today we’re going to start the novel.

Today’s the day. Pencils sharpened, blank sheets of paper stacked, laptop dusted, interruptions cancelled, social media written out of reality, coffee hot.

Come on, inspiration, we’re all ready for you.

Any time now would be good.

[Hours pass. William sits motionless, fingers poised over the keyboard. Somebody hits the fast-forward button, and as the hours pass, we see William droop like an un-watered houseplant. As the sun sets and an unscheduled power-cut blankets the whole neighbourhood in darkness, William gets up from his laptop and shuffles off into the come-early night.

In his despair he’s left behind anything with which he could conceivably write. He roams the dark streets, muttering under his breath. Suddenly – at the furthest possible point of his walk, in pitch darkness – his eyes light up, bathing the street in the glow of inspiration.

“Yes!” he exclaims, searching his pockets for something, anything, with which to write down the idea that’s just come to him.

In the end, he kneels down and starts scratching at the pavement with his fingernails, shuffling backwards as the idea unfurls in front of him, line after line of idea that flows into him as the Muse whispers in his ear.]
   
It’s going to be – Yes! – a sprawling epic of many worlds and many dimensions, telling the stories of – Yes! I mean, seriously? – heroes, villains, lovers, haters, quite-likers, beautiful people, average-looking people with something about them, scribes, pharisees and dark-hearted schemers.

A fantasy novel, then?

There will be rings and amulets – Yes! Go with what comes! – and swords, and quests – oh, and at least one old guy, bearded, to start the whole thing off.

I’ll build my world with politics and economics, but with magic and dragons as well. There’ll be technology, but it will have evolved from clockwork and kettles – Yes! Go with it! You’ll lose it if you question it! – rather than electricity and c-prompts. People will ride around on horses.

Yes, that’s it, a fantasy novel.

[William races back to his laptop. Which tells him to wait while it installs urgent upgrades. He grabs a blank sheet of paper, snaps the first pencil in his haste, forces himself to calm down, and starts writing.]

If the beard and the long cloak printed with stars and sigils don’t tip you off, you’ll know my significant old guy by the hat. He’ll live in a mountain-top cave on a mountain top so remote that he has to pay extra for his online-shopping deliveries.

No, that’s not right. Dang! I had the tone of voice just right there. But there are no supermarkets in fantasy novels. Not in mine, anyway.

He lives in a cave on a mountain top so remote that the birds – the eagles? No, been done – have to deliver his groceries – have to deliver the ancient scrolls that he orders by some kind of magic from the library of the ancient monastery on the neighbouring mountain top.

Either that, or he has to wait for the weekly yak-train that brings his other supplies. He picks up his post once a month from the general stores down in the village.

No, he doesn’t. Rats! I’ve lost it.

Okay, relax, no pressure, deep breath, that’s it, screw that one up; now feed yet another sheet of blank A4 paper into this steampunk version of an upgraded laptop, and let’s start again.

“You are the chosen one!” shouted Edgalcius the Mage, his voice echoing around the peaks and crags of his mountain-top home.

“M-me?” said Pipsqueak, scrambling to his feet after the long climb, cringing even further into the extra thermal vest his mother had insisted he wear under his jerkin. “I’m just delivering your perishables.”

“Perishables?”

Pipsqueak had climbed two hundred feet up a vertical cliff face to reach the ledge outside the Mage’s cave. In a hurry. In two layers of thermal underwear beneath his typical peasant garb. He was feeling unsteady.

“Yes, the yak-train’s delayed and–”

“Hang on! Hang on!” Clambering into view came a young man, clad in silver armour, his long fair hair caught in a clasp at the nape of his neck, red-faced and puffing. “Sorry I’m late. Couldn’t get the horse past the rockfall.”

“Yes, the yak-train–” Pipsqueak began, but the young man was still talking.

“There was a whole train of yaks there as well. They couldn’t get past the rockfall either. I got past them and realised what the problem was. Had to climb. Hope I’m not late. Apparently, there’s a place in the village that takes in horses.” He stopped, and looked at Pipsqueak.

“A boarding stable,” said Pipsqueak, because that seemed expected of him. The young man nodded and then looked down at his armour, brushing at it and then leaning forward to inspect his knees.

“Excuse me,” said the Mage, in a tone that Pipsqueak hadn’t heard before. The Mage was the Mage, not a tetchy old man with a voice like that. He was in time to see the irritation that Edgalcius wiped from his face, and then the Mage was the Mage again.

“You,” said Edgalcius, drawing himself up to his full height and raising his staff into the air so that it caught the first sunlight of the day. He stood facing the young man, who was still inspecting his armour. “You!” Edgalcius repeated, more loudly. The young man looked up.

Pipsqueak could guess what came next. He unslung the pack from his shoulders and carried it across the ledge to the cave-mouth. He’d unpack the perishables into the cold store while the wizard went about his business with the bloke in silver.

“Not a scratch on it!” he heard the bloke say.

Typical, thought Pipsqueak. Just typical that I’d blunder into something like this. His six older brothers would laugh at him again. His father’s six older brothers would probably laugh at him too, all crammed together in the small hut complex that the family called home.

He’d ripped his leggings again, on that scramble up the last stretch of the mountain.

His father would smile kindly at him, as he always did, and ruffle his hair as though he forgave his seventh son yet another clumsiness. His mother would come to him later and tuck a small parcel into his hands. It would turn out to contain another pair of socks.

Despite himself, Pipsqueak was comforted. Inside the cave he stepped past the treasure chest and over the glowing sword lying on the floor, steadied the small brass lamp on the shelf that his shoulder brushed as he went by, narrowly avoided the helmet and breastplate stacked next to the mage’s desk, and unloaded the pack into the recess in the cave-wall that the mage had enchanted to remain cold.

As always, he looked around for the source of the illumination in the cave, and as always, he couldn’t find it. Pipsqueak stood briefly at the mage’s desk, looking down at the parchments unrolled there. His fingers traced an illuminated P that began a passage of illuminated handwriting that he could not read. The heading at the top of the page was printed in block capitals. “How to recognise the Chosen One,” Pipsqueak read out loud. He shook his head. Mage business indeed. Then he remembered himself and went back outside.

Edgalcius was still standing with his back to the cave-mouth. The ledge – did I mention this? – was deceptively spacious, 10m by 9m at its widest point (there are estate agents in my fantasy world), with shrubs in pots around the edge and a round pine garden table off to one side, with matching chairs.

“Me?” said the young man in silver, who was still standing where he’d first appeared, facing Edgalcius across the ledge. Pipsqueak was surprised to see that he looked embarrassed.

“I think there must have been some–” The young man looked at his wrist and then at the sundial, which I would have mentioned earlier if I’d thought of it. “I couldn’t possibly–” he faltered.

In the silence that followed, Pipsqueak tiptoed back to the point on the ledge at which he’d first scrambled up. He stood, stooped forward, making himself as silent and insignificant as he could manage, easing himself half-behind a ficus Benjamin (in a pot) that was almost as tall as he was.

He had been ordered by his eldest brother to reassure Edgalcius that the rest of his supplies would be arriving at the turning circle as usual shortly – there were men and women coming up from the village to clear the rockfall – but now was not the moment.

Pipsqueak could tell that something was wrong. The young man – oh, heck, let’s give him a name – Roland was saying, “I thought I was here because you wanted to give me something. I didn’t realise I might have to– Glad to help of course, but just at the moment, pressure of revision. And anyway, I’ve got Princess Eustacia’s party on Sat–”

Pipsqueak made himself very small. He could feel a dense heaviness in the air, like the build-up to a thunderstorm. But it had come all at once. The sky was – clear, but it felt black.

“You are–” Edgalcius stopped. The broken sentence echoed around the mountains. In the monastery on top of the adjoining mountain, a window slammed shut, like punctuation.

“She invited me specially,” said Roland, in a voice both apologetic and stubborn.

Lightning flashed out of a blue sky.

Edgalcius stared at Roland. Then at Pipsqueak. He muttered something under his breath.

Then he turned and glared up at me. “What are you looking at?” he demanded.

“Me?” [William snatches his hands back from the laptop.]

“Yes, you, sunshine. It’s not so easy, is it, writing fantasy? Oh, I know where you’re going with this, but have you thought it through?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I get it, I really do. Hero’s journey, right? But think about it. Roland’s got all the connections, the resources; his parents probably know everybody who could possibly buy him out of trouble. If he could even find trouble. But this little tyke.” Edgalcius gestures at Pipsqueak. “Really?”

“He doesn’t start with all the advantages, but that’s the point, isn’t it?”

“Yada, yada, and a hero has to be capable of spiritual growth, yeah, yeah, heard it all before. You wouldn’t believe how often I get people – and what kind of a name is Edgalcius, anyway?”

“I thought – I could call you – Ed?”

“Give me strength.”

“We could talk. You know, discuss progress. Just occasionally, as a kind of digression from–”

“You think you’re so original, don’t you? A fantasy novel with training wheels, just running along in the background. You’re going to work through all the stages of the hero’s journey, aren’t you?”

“Yes, just occasionally, not to interrupt – actually, to interrupt – my usual posts, and there was something on Facebook about saving the kitten. Nine stages, and – hold on.”

“Oh, not the picture! You don’t have to put in a picture every time!”

“I like to. Hang on, I’ll just–”

“–there.”

“Ouch! Okay, but you don’t have to start a separate, totally different post–”

Read something the other day about birth-rates. They’re rising in Africa, apparently, and falling in Europe. If large-scale migrations are going to be caused by global heating in future, it would be ironic if the indigenous Europeans vacated large tracts of “their” continent to make space for–

“Sorry. Force of habit. Stopped now.”

“[Expletive deleted] authors!”

“I prefer wri–”

“And now that you’ve started this clever-dick, post-modern, broken-fourth-wall tarradiddle of a shaggy-dog–”

“You started it! You broke the fourth wall!”

“And you could have deleted that! Now that you’ve got this far, mister must-have-a-picture-but-don’t-mind-tearing-the-fabric-of-reality, what are you going to tell them? Eh?”

Pipsqueak and Roland are staring up at the sky with matching expressions of – I don’t know, let’s call it existential dread – on their faces.

Luckily, there’s also an enchanted pool on Edgalcius’ ledge. About three feet across, full of deep, clear water, it reflects – well, the sky usually, but at other times, whatever Edgalcius wants to see in it. Right now, it’s reflecting me.

My head, and the wall behind me. Must do something about my background.

This is ridiculous. I’m video-conferencing with the characters in my fantasy novel.

But I do look a little bit like – Ed has the same idea.

“It’s a genie!” Edgalcius snaps at Pipsqueak and Roland. “Deal with it.”

“Pipsqueak!” I say. “You didn’t just brush against the shelf. You brushed against my lamp when you went to unload the perishables!”

Pipsqueak didn’t sign on for this. He’s sweating, although that may just be all the thermal underwear he’s wearing. He gets even more up-close and personal with the ficus Benjamin.

But I can see that he also relaxes, very slightly. A genie in a lamp makes sense to him in a way that an authorial intervention doesn’t.

“Oh genie,” says Edgalcius (and we both ignore the muffled “Hey!” from inside the cave), “Have you considered sending both of them together?”

I have, actually, but it’s also part of the story that Edgalcius has that idea. He realises that Pipsqueak is the chosen one, but recognises Roland’s qualities (stubbornness, social connections, rich parents and others that I haven’t invented yet) and decrees that the two of them should set off together.

“What, two heroes? That’s a bit cumbersome, surely?”

“You’re the one who wrote them. But think about it. Nice bit of contrast there. Class tensions. That one learns humility; the other one – spiritual growth, I suppose. You came to me, and that’s what I think.”

“Will you talk to them? I don’t think Roland wants to go.”

“Neither does the other one. They’ll both refuse at first because that’s how these stories always go. But this is what I do. Leave it to me.”

“Okay. I’ll just–”

“You go off and catch the end of that thing about migration. No, go on, that’s fine. We’ll thrash out the details later.”

So much for controlling our own destinies. As Pliny the Elder is widely supposed to have written, “Ex Africa semper aliquid novi,” although I’ve always understood that to be a reference to elephants, not to innovation, nor to migration, nor indeed to the “Western Civilisations” of the future.

There was a story idea floating around earlier.

Story idea floating around here earlier, I mean.

I didn’t like the sort-of-rhyme made by “idea/here” so I deleted “here” from my opening sentence.

By “here”, I meant Falmouth. Would have meant. “Earlier” is yesterday. Was yesterday.

Perhaps I’ve had enough coffee already today.

So, yes, right. I had just come down the steps from Berkeley Hill (I was next to the Yoga Hut, you know?), and I saw a woman ahead of me, striding along Kimberley Park Road towards the park.

Thanks. Can I put it on the tab with the other three? Yes, perhaps a glass of water as well would be a good idea.

She was on the opposite pavement, and from where I was standing, she was going from left to right. From Berkeley Vale. Towards the park. Park.

No, this is not going to be the post in which I talk about writing only the essentials and trusting the reader to fill in the gaps.

So. Anyway. I saw the woman.

By “striding”, I mean: tall woman wearing a calf-length, Summer-weight white dress with flowers on it. She was walking – striding – like she was happy about where she was going and wanted to get there soonest.

She had a white-ish sunhat pushed back. Light-green cardigan, peach-coloured flat shoes that reminded me of the word “espadrilles”. Age? No idea. Could have been my age, perhaps a decade or two younger.

No dog, and she wasn’t carrying a bouquet of roses down by her side. Probably would have had both, if I’d been making her up.

What I thought was: is she real?

She was very brightly lit by the sunshine, very high-definition against the stone-coloured background. To me, she seemed entirely distinct from her surroundings.

It was as if – I remember thinking, and you’ll have to excuse the arrogance, but I had a vacancy for a daydream – she’d been put there for me to see.

And that got me going.

By the time I started up Kimberly Road, I was well into a daydream around the idea that she hadn’t been real at all. But if she hadn't been real...?

Hallucination brought on by a brain injury? No. Ghost? Yawn.

I was up towards Budock Terrace by the time I realised that we were dealing with time travel here. She was from (cue music) the future.

In the imaginary novel I wrote on that walk, dear (real) reader (and if you were walking up Kimberley Park Road yesterday, wearing a dress as described earlier, I apologise), time travel is/was/will be a thing of the past. It was invented, a dozen years from now, and it became the next big thing.

Specifically, time-travelling for the fun of it, posting selfies at historic events, interviewing historic figures, collecting artefacts from the past, watching battles, dropping litter, chugging soda out of plastic bottles (and leaving the empties behind), attempting to change history (oh, the debates about the morality of killing you-know-who before he came to power), and then inevitably, attempting to fix the past after all the tampering, arguing about our responsibility to keep the past as it was – all became the next big things.

And then it was all over. Those irresponsible visitors from the future had messed with the timeline so much that our own present – that’s our present, 2019 – had become so twisted up that the time-travellers’ present – shall we say, circa 2035? – was beginning to disintegrate. Friends turning out never to have been born, historically important events not, er, having happened, cultural milestones – Allen V Cheesman’s Phazed World series, for example – never having been launched.

So – my imaginary novel starts here – the time-travellers from the future are now trying to fix the past. For reasons that I’ll just have to invent later, they’ve decided that their biggest priority is to fix 2015-2020.

By the time I reached Western Avenue on my walk – and turned left – I had decided: the novel starts after the major work has been done.

Of course, there’s still work to be done on the US presidential election of 2016, but the accidental destabilisation of the UK political system, in the same year, is being allowed to work itself back to normal.

What’s left is tweaking. Fixing minor events in 2019 that have/had a disproportionately big effect on the future.

One of those events was my walk yesterday morning (I decided as I turned right onto Pennance Road). It was important that I saw that woman walking on that street, as I did, because I had to be inspired (sic; see above re: arrogance) to write this post.

BUT the original woman had been arrested before I’d seen her. She was … let me see … a renegade time traveller who wanted a selfie in front of the new Park Live Stage before it became famous for [REDACTED].

If you don’t read this post – and they’re still working on how to get you to read this far; every time I leave the room, a person in futuristic clothing appears in front of my laptop and tinkers with the opening paragraphs; lucky I never covered the camera – where was I?

Oh yes – if you don’t read this post, you won’t be inspired to [REDACTED] and if you don’t do that, you won’t [REDACTED; apologies from the future, but I really can’t let him warn you in advance] and if [REDACTED; and I haven’t got time to delete all this before he comes back into the room] before [REDACTED] with your [REDACTED] lemon-scented [REDACTED] flaps its wings and [REDACTED] the eruption. [Sorry. Good luck.]

So the woman I saw, in the patched-up and mended and mostly fixed 2019, was a hologram of an actress hired in 2035 for her resemblance to the original activist…

…who is now imprisoned in 2035…

…and probably needs rescuing…

…and I walked down Spernen Wyn Road, through St Mary Gardens, onto Gyllyngvase Beach, and what did I find?

How convenient!

In the bag with my swimming things, I found a mobile – no, it wasn’t a phone. Three buttons on it and a screen. And there was a letter too. Handwritten.

Dear William. To go to 2035 and rescue the activist, press the red button. To come back to 2019 and write the blog post, green. To delete all this rubbish and start again, blue. William.

That was some trip.

There was an all-female shortlist for the Best Novel category of the Hugo Awards 2019.

I know this because a person posted about it on Facebook, and was promptly dumped on by another person on Facebook.
 
That first indignant comment was followed by fifty more, and if we’re making this visual, the person who started it quickly disappeared under a collapsed scrum of brawling persons sounding off about gender. The word “patriarchy” was thrown, as was the word “sisterhood”.

I’m not (quite) stupid enough to join in. Either those six novels are the best science-fiction novels around at the moment, or there is a surprising lack of diversity, blah, blah, et cetera, blah, blah, in literary prizes focused on sci-fi.

Non-female persons were shortlisted in other categories.
 
The prizes were announced on 18th August, and just for the record, the winner in the novel category was Mary Robinette Kowal for her novel The Calculating Stars (Tor). I used to read a lot more sci-fi when I was young than I do now, but I’ll look it up.
 
There used to be a convention that the first person to mention [a certain Austrian-born dictator, whom I’ve decided never to mention here by name] in an argument on Facebook, lost the argument. These days, the convention is that all arguments turn into the same slanging match.

The comment that I turned around in my head for a while, after reading that spat on Facebook, was this. “If all your male ancestors would stop oppressing all my female ancestors, and vice-versa, we could get along.”

I didn’t post it. Obviously. But at any point before the present generation, aren’t we on both sides of that particular argument-of-first-resort? We could share it and possibly resolve it, if we weren't all so immediate in our attacks.
 
We can’t rewrite history. History shouldn’t write the present (discuss). But history does seem to insert passages into our working draft of the present that really should be cut out.
 
“Kill your darlings,” said William Faulkner. Elsewhere on the internet, we find Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch saying this (in a lecture, a hundred-plus years ago). “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”
 
Stephen King (among others) writes about the importance of leaving a manuscript alone for a while before going back and editing it. Such distance tends to reveal that the coolest bits – the passages of which you are most proud – are actually quite embarrassing. They’re your “darlings”, or they were when you wrote them. Kill them. It’s for the best.
 
We can’t leave the present alone for a while before going back and editing it, but if we did, I suspect that we’d be surprised at (1) the amount of time we spend arguing, and (2) the short list of arguments available for us to join.
 
So many of those arguments are remarkably binary, without nuance or subtlety or even much real content beneath the headlines and the soundbites. We’re not analytic or reflective creatures after all. You’re either with us or against us, left or right, good or bad. There’s no opportunity to get together and talk.
 
We’ve all got challenges in our lives, and if you want to argue the point, I’d accept that you’ve got more challenges than I have. Okay. How about lunch?

You may wish to ignore this post.

It's an unstructured reverie that began around the question "What does technology do for us?" with a vague intention of being predictably critical about today's technology. I'm old enough to be comfortable with my own predictability.

I started with this observation.

I wear spectacles, which makes me a "cyborg" by at least one definition. They make the horizon easier to see. But the horizon doesn't change.

And where I thought I was going - perhaps this is obvious - was into a self-conscious little play-around with that idea of the horizon getting clearer but not changing. But I couldn't make it work.

I suppose talking about "technology" is a bit like talking about "transport". My blue Honda Jazz (pre-owned, pre-loved, but we don't talk about past relationships) takes me around, gets me to wherever I need to go, and is an all-round good thing.

At times, my jump leads are better things, and every now and then, the bright red Portable Power Pack Jump Starter that I carry in the boot is the best thing of all.

I like my little blue car. If only I could remember to switch off the headlights.

But under the heading of "transport", there are also tanks, jet fighters, bombers, crop sprayers, roads scarring the landscape, bicycles swerving out into the traffic, drivers not leaving enough space as they pass bicycles, advertising for car insurance ... ambulances, fire engines, stretch limousines ... what has transport done for us? It's complicated.

Under "technology" ...

I use Google Calendar, and if it's an international call coming up, which it sometimes is, I don't have to worry about time-zone calculations any more.

If we use Google Meet, we can see each other, and that's a little like time travel (no, I've never time-travelled). That's what tonight looks like, I might think. Or perhaps: there's somebody who hasn't yet experienced this morning.

And yes, I think there is a responsibility at both ends to set up an interesting background.

Making a phonecall is just making a phonecall, but video-calling done properly (I don't think it counts as "conferencing" if there are only two of you) offers a slice of another life.

I remember fax machines as a minor miracle - here's a duplicate of a document that still exists somewhere else. And way back further, hearing the voice in my tin can, conveyed by the taut string to the other tin can.

When we got our first toy telephones, we went to great lengths to make sure that we couldn't hear each other except via the telephones. The wires were never long enough, but we did at least achieve real-time bedroom-to-bedroom communication.

The technology I miss most is my Psion Organiser Series 3, which fitted into my inside jacket pocket along with my wallet. A little clamshell thing, screen and keyboard, which I could hold in my hands while typing with my thumbs. I got quite good at that, wrote 10,000 words of an 80,000-word book while standing up on commuter trains.

We're all living much longer and there are more of us, in part thanks to technology. We have the internet and social media, which give us at least the opportunity to debate and discuss and thereby gain wisdom.

Technology goes past too quickly. But it's given us so many visions. A better Psion Organiser. A more stable video-conferencing tool. Fibre-optic cable rather than can-connecting string. An internet of wisdom - which come to think of it was Al Gore's (and others') vision of the Information Superhighway, remember that?

What's the dream, now?

Robots, I suppose. We've had fake news; now we're working on fake people.

But the other thing about technology is that it's all about means. Enabling people to do things, or saving them the trouble of doing them. Working for us rather than alongside us. Not innovating, or inventing, or taking on and doing stuff.

I wonder how different the world would be, if we could just set up a technology around an objective, give it autonomy, and leave it alone to get on with it. Fly me to the moon, algorithm, and let me play among the stars. Or why don't you go yourself? Set up our habitations on Mars, before we even work out how to arrive.

No, wait a second.

Technology's inspired a lot of apocalyptic fiction, hasn't it?

Not much of it optimistic.

Like I said, ignore this post.

For an insight into human nature, consider my friend's bird table.

She found it in the garden when she moved into a house. Before then, my friend had never owned or had access to a bird table. She'd never thought about bird tables.

But now, she told me, she was enthusiastic about feeding birds.

So we spoke at length about how to prevent birds from feeding. She didn't want seagulls, magpies, crows invading her bird table. She wanted to leave out food for the robin and the wren.

Then we realised what we were doing.

And that led us into an even more interesting conversation.

For those of us who don’t meditate, washing up is the most sublime form of meditation.

I don’t practise mindfulness either, but there’s something so very in-the-moment about plates stacked so high in the sink that you can’t get the kettle under the tap.

Today, now, this minute, I think that there are two kinds of people in the world.

There are people who stack the plates so high in the sink (bringing them in and dumping them down with a sense of a task triumphantly achieved) that there’s no way to start washing up without taking some of them out again (sometimes – pointedly – all the way back to the dining table), and there are people who clear what’s there already before bringing in another lot.

There are people who don’t rinse the suds off before putting a plate to dry, and there are people so twitchy about their own kitchens that they notice these distinctions.

I find that my washing-up practice is best conducted very early on the morning after, to the sound of meditation music – rushing streams, women wailing (tunefully), occasional single notes plucked from guitars.

A very slight not-quite-hangover helps, in that it imparts an urge to get everything precisely just-so.

No, Spellcheck, we need that hyphen.

If the rain is hitting the skylight hard, and everybody else is asleep, and the embers in the fire are still showing a few sparks, and there are leftovers for a quiet pre-breakfast self-indulgence, so much the better.

No, CCleaner, I still don’t want that update. You showed me that pop-up five minutes ago.

If there’s a still-wrapped present under the tree, that everybody missed yesterday, and it turns out to have your name on it–

What am I talking about? It’s the middle of August.

That’s the trouble with unreliable narrators. You just can’t rely on them.

[Important detail I left out: today, I’m planning to write about unreliable narrators.]

We did hold something of a celebration yesterday, and the day was so drenchingly wet that we did light the fire. That was a good idea. But no. There isn’t a tree, and I’m imagining the still-wrapped present.

And yes. Everything else about this moment triggers associations with a December morning after. There’s discarded wrapping paper. The fire isn’t quite out. It was necessary, you understand, to do something with the couple of left-over roast potatoes.

No, Spellcheck. ‘Roast’ is correct.

In that sense, the intended post-festive atmosphere – perhaps you felt it? – has a kind of truth to it, while not being true. Kind of. Discuss.

Much of what makes a story is atmosphere. Which is built up of [I don’t know what] incidental detail, style, voice, crashingly intrusive statements of the obvious. There is an atmosphere of post-festive, slightly tetchy, would-eat-comfort-food-will-settle-for-cold-potatoes-ness hanging over this blog post.

Thank you, CCleaner. No.

Snow is drifting against the dry-stone walls marking out the fields, and down in the valley, I can see a gritting lorry moving slowly along the main road to Alverton. The light is grey with the promise of more snow. [Alverton? What? I'm in Falmouth.]

That is not true, but it should be. The snow only started yesterday evening, but already this morning, when I went out with the dog, I had to push against the front door to get it open. [That’s absolute nonsense. We’re in the middle of August.]

There are children tobogganing down the access road towards our house. Later, we’ll serve them cocoa, and their parents will walk down to join us for coffee. I can see their cars parked along the top road – they won’t risk driving down.

I wonder if Johanna will come.

All that – the tobogganing, the cocoa, the parents joining us – it’s all a Winter tradition [and totally made up]. I’ll leave fitting the snow plough to the tractor for tomorrow, or perhaps the next day. I moved the Land Rover up to the top road last night. Chains? Yep.

I feel a tightness in my chest. Marko will be with her, and the twins. We must avoid eye contact.

Behind me, the log fire is blazing and the house is warm. We hung those tapestries back in ’79, the Professor and I. He brought them back from – well, yes. You know about that. You read his book, of course. It was all true.

The rug in front of the fire. I should remove it, in case she does come.

The bookshelves? Oh, they’ve been there forever. Oak, I think. Help yourself, if you’re looking for something to read. No, not – not that book.

But know what? I don’t feel like writing about unreliable narrators today. Maybe we’ll leave them for another week.

I’ve got that high-definition caffeinated feeling that you get on mornings after, you know?

And anyway, unreliable narrators aren’t people who babble on about snowdrifts and children tobogganing – and they certainly don’t do that on damp grey August mornings that are just possibly warm enough for a swim later.

They’re narrators who are part of the story. At some level. You realise, as you read, that they don’t know themselves, or that they’re emotionally involved, or that they have some kind of agenda. Even when they’re telling, they’re showing themselves.

I don’t think the narrative voice – the voice of the narrator, the voice telling the story – necessarily has to be an “I”, and I don't think that "I" has to be the "I" who sits behind the laptop. Typewriter. Who holds the pen.

I do think that one of the pitfalls of storytelling is that you reveal yourself. That’s not necessarily a pitfall, but it’s a shame if it’s unintended. [You caught that tendency towards irritability, didn't you? I know you did. I'm not really like that. Really. But every time I clear my mind of thoughts, somebody adds a pile of dirty dishes.]

Which is another reason – No, CCleaner! – to be just ever so slightly aware of the narrator. Maybe it’s just you, telling your story. But maybe there’s scope for “you” to be just subtly a character as well as everybody else in the story. [I'm really a nice person.]

Did you see them ride out, that morning, on their quest? That rose-red sunrise, do you remember? I was up on the plateau, waiting to light the signal fire.

Tell me how it was, for you, watching them leave. No, don’t tell me at length; just a couple of lines in passing. You said your goodbyes, didn't you, last night?

As you tell a story, or read one, maybe pause every now and then to ask your narrator a couple of questions. This doesn’t happen every time, but in some stories, you can find – detect, even – a story behind the story.

Read Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) or Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926).

What? Questions? No, certainly not. There’s no Q&A today. Oh, no, that's not what I meant at all.

Ladies and gentlemen, William Essex has left the website.

Hurriedly.

Some days, I think I should just sit here waving back at the trees.

The morning is uniformly grey, there’s a lot of silence around, and the trees are waving at me. Stillness. Except for the trees. It’s about 6.15 in the morning, which is – ah! Sudden flurry of wind, sudden scuffle among the trees. They shouldn’t be fighting, this early in the morning.

It’s 6.15 in the morning, I said that already, which is … some other time in Seattle, Washington. I was speaking to somebody there, video chat, and she had a big mug of coffee while I was winding down at the end of the day.

Now I’ve got the big mug of coffee and – anyway, it’s not morning in America at the moment.

I was going to write about something. Yes. I came across a rant the other day. On the obvious social-media platform. A rant posted to a group dedicated to creative writing.

A woman – young, I think, although I’m not sure – had written a story – a fantasy novel, I think – and failed to convince an agent to take it. I could add another “I think” here, but that would be repetitive: implied in the rant was that she’d tried several agents and they’d all turned her down. She was facing a brick wall.

Except that she wasn’t.

The woman who ranted began by declaring her intention to rant. Then she ranted. She was good at ranting, and while I can’t say anything about her novel, I can say that she is a forceful writer. Ranter. But writer as well, obviously.

Most of the comments on her rant (there were lots of them) suggested that she should persevere. Archetypes were evoked: struggling artist; years of rejection slips; final vindication. But a few of them asked the question that occurred to me. Why did this matter?

Back in the day – no, that day – the publishing industry consisted of small-ish firms (that were about to be taken over by conglomerates) in which editors spoke disparagingly of slush piles and would-be novel-writers without access to social media grumbled into their sock drawers about the impossibility of ever getting published.

These days … we have social media. The phrase “getting published” is still a kind of mantra, as though it’s an end-point rather than a beginning, but the act of getting published is comparatively easy.

Dangerously so, if you’re old enough to believe that manuscripts should be left in a drawer for a while and then run through the typewriter again – not that I’m deliberately showing my age or anything.

But “getting published” isn’t a portal in the way that it used to be, and it isn’t guarded by “gatekeepers” (remember how we used that word?) in the way that it used to be.

Yes, there’s still a “trad” publishing industry – been there, done that – and yes, they’re still as dedicated as ever to not publishing would-be novelists. Now, there’s also an “indie” publishing industry, but no, they can’t lavish their attention on everybody, so yes, they’re becoming much the same (although there was a phase where they bought the rights to out-of-print authors to give an impression of scale).

It’s a human instinct to close ranks around the chosen few.

Now, there’s the free-for-all that is the internet. Where there was once pulp fiction – cheap paperbacks, pamphlets, A5-sized sci-fi/fantasy “magazines” packed with short fiction in tiny print (I have a couple) – now there are e-books and POD paperbacks. [Print On Demand.]

If you remember even further back, to the early printing presses churning out tracts that were nailed to the dooors of churches, famously or not, you might agree with me that today's over-accessible publishing "industry" has a longer tradition than the tightly clenched publishing industry of the late twentieth century. Not that it matters any more, but.

One way to give an impression of high-mindedness is to decry the quality of some of the fiction available on e-readers these days. Fine. But you don’t have to read it. And who are you to deny those people their chance to reach an audience?

This is not going to turn into a rant. This is NOT!

But I’ve been entertaining myself with Kindle Unlimited recently (alternatives are available, etc.). This is not a plug, and I’m not taking money.

I’ve just been enjoying downloading and reading ebooks for free. I’ve discovered authors I would never have tried (and sent some of them back after the first paragraph). I’ve strayed into genres, ditto (and ditto).

In the process, I’ve tolerated writing that hasn’t been as accomplished as it could be, and I’ve been entertained by stories that haven’t necessarily followed a conventional narrative logic. Or any logic at all, sometimes.

To put this as tactfully as I can, I’ve adjusted some of my tolerance levels, and been rewarded for doing so. [There are life-lessons everywhere, right?]

I’m left happy with the idea that anybody interested in “getting published” can do it. Even if what they first decide to publish is a rant about not getting published.

If you’re reading this – I have, after all, published it, so that’s possible – I just want to say: good luck, best wishes, and I’m looking forward to reading your book.

Characters in books tend to know their own back-stories.

We can extend that to characters in films, games, box sets, blog posts and just about anything else that you might care to invent. You understand that I’m talking mainly but not exclusively about fiction, right?

Characters also tend to know what they look like. I’m the character here - because somebody needs to act as the example - and I’m not going to spend any of my third paragraph glancing across at that handily placed mirror and describing what I see there.

Any more than I’m going to sit here reflecting – in detail – on the lifetime’s experience that has brought me to this moment. Not even the relevant bits.

Which is a problem if you’re trying to write a novel that starts with a bloke sitting on a sofa writing a blog post (who is feeling a bit dishonest because the only mirror he can see is actually showing him the ceiling). You’ve written your opening scene, let’s say, and now you need to fill out your character a bit more before he sets off on his quest.

Or doesn't, given that I'm quite busy today. Maybe we could pencil in the quest for tomorrow?

You could do an “info dump” – there’s even a term for it – but like I said, I know all that stuff. I’m just not – sorry – going to sit back on this slightly saggy old sofa, in this cluttered but comfortable room with its view of the harbour through the two front windows and the glass panel on the front door, and tell myself my own back story.

Even if it does add depth to my character.

The harpoon gun and the framed photograph of me with [REDACTED] are going to remain unmentioned. I’m not suddenly going to think back over that time I saved [REDACTED] from [REDACTED] with a spanner and a chisel. When I write a blog post, I think about the blog post, not about my past.

Sorry.

Info-dumping kills any narrative momentum you might have built up, and the worst thing is, it’s incongruous. Like I said, characters just don’t do that.

But you have to get the biographical information across to the reader somehow. If you’re trying to write a fantasy novel, you also have to convey the world you’ve built.

But how do you do that, if you don’t want to stun your readers with all the “necessary” verbiage?

Okay. Yes. You do have to drop bits of information into the narrative. You’re right. But look at this another way. Info-drops (not dumps) can be useful. For one thing, they can be used to change the pace of the narrative.

For example, I’ve just single-handedly fought off a dragon with a frying pan and a domestic fire extinguisher. That scene was so nail-bitingly fast that I think we could all do with a leisurely description of the editorial office I once shared in Holborn, which had a view out over a medieval plague pit. That was a green rectangle of grass among the office blocks. The plague pit where I once found a ring…

What does it say about my character – as a character – that I can remember that green space more clearly than the magazine I was editing back then? What does it say about London, that the ancient dead are left undisturbed? Those ancient dead, anyway. I wonder…

But look! There! On the horizon flying towards us! More dragons! Back to the story and let’s pick up the pace.

Ouch! Sorry. Just caught the ring I’m wearing on the arrow rest of my longbow. It’s an old ring, very old, with an inscription…

Find your own answer to the “How do I tell the reader what she needs to know?” question. There are no rules except the ones you can work out from your best friend telling you “The beginning was good, but I just haven’t had time since then…” and then changing the subject.

Characters know stuff. They don’t feel the need to explain it. But they might mention it in passing.

Be careful not to repeat yourself.

And trust your reader. They – she, if we’re talking about my imaginary reader, who is currently grinning at me from her perch just above my laptop screen – will pick up the slightest clue. Possibly fall asleep if you over-explain, but hang around for more if you under-explain subtly enough. And if all else fails, you can arrange–

“Where did you get that scar?”

–for a convenient interruption by a secondary character you’ve intro–

“Secondary? Excuse me!”

–very important character, crucial to the plot, whom you’ve introduced because the whole book would fall apart without her. Not just because you need somebody to ask a question.

Real reader, I'd like you to meet my imaginary reader. She's the one doing the interrupting (avoid superfluous stage directions). And now excuse me while I answer her question.

“That scar? I was running. The alarm was sounding. The bulkhead door was open, but without thinking, I put my foot on the bottom sill of the bulkhead. That lifted me enough to hit my head on the top sill of the bulkhead.”

“Ugh! Did you get blood in your eyes? Were you on a warship or a submarine? You were on a mission, obviously?”

Good questions, but let’s not answer them. Real readers (let’s hope) will be interested enough to wait around for more detail. If you were writing this, just suppose, I would suggest that you wait until later to reveal that I was recruited – then – and trained – there – in martial arts among other skills.

You’ve said enough already to leave the rest of it until I kick-box my way out of a tight spot.

But really, make up your own rules. What matters is keeping people reading your book. Nothing else matters, not even what your creative-writing teacher says about characterisation. You can invent characters who interrupt–

“Your imaginary reader is a girl?”

“Most people are.”

“I’m a woman, thank you!”

“Most people are female, I meant.”

–as and when you need them. If you have an Invisible Friend as a character, as well as an Imaginary Reader, and let’s give them capitals, your Invisible Friend can interrupt as well, and you can use all the interruptions from both of them to get–

“Don’t tell me you’re bringing him into this! He's invisible!”

–some quite intricate stretches of dialogue, but–

“I’m needed. We’re about to do the he said/she said thing.”

“Go away! This is the one about info dumps.”

[Said my Imaginary Reader. I’m losing the plot here.]

“But if there are three of us–“

[Said my Invisible Friend.]

“Trying to write a blog post here, people.”

[That was me.]

–you need to keep track of who’s speaking at any given moment. Putting in he said/she said can seem cumbersome, but when it’s necessary, it’s absolutely necessary.

“Told you. It’s he said/she said this week. We can do it with three people.”

“You don’t need me, then.”

“You're not listening! Read that last bit again. We’re doing he said/she said, and you’re the only she.”

“Said the Invisible Friend who’s turned up in a ballgown.”

“It’s not a ballgown! It’s a cape.”

“It’s a cloak,” said the person who’s actually writing this. Me. “Black. Heavy-duty cotton. Mostly. I dreamed you up, so I can dress you how I like. I thought about giving you a scythe, but–”

“I like your ring. Haven’t seen that before.”

“She said! Put in she said! People are going to think I said that!”

“Oh, thank you. I dreamed it up a few paragraphs back and started wearing it straight away.”

“Nobody’s going to think you said–“ she said. Began to say. Was interrupted while saying. My Imaginary Reader, I mean. She said that. To my Invisible Friend. Because she didn’t think that you would think that my Invisible Friend would say – sorry, I’m over-explaining. He seems to be Visible now, anyway.

“What does the inscription say?” said my Invisible Friend, politely ignoring the over-explanation. Visible friend.

“Oh, just some stuff about, don’t wear this, blah, blah, if you do, I’ll come and get you, et cetera. I think it’s a prop
from another story.”

“Is this my Easter Egg? I love chocolate! Oh, thank you!”

“What’s that odd scratching noise? Is there somebody at the door?”

“More like slithering. That musty smell. Who’s that moaning? There’s definitely somebody at the door.”

“Talk about an obvious stage direction!” [I’m not sure who said that. I just added it in the read-through.]

“Oh look – suddenly the inconveniently glass panel in the front door, which you specified earlier, is opaque. We can’t see through it.”

“Gosh! There’s a shadow behind it.”

“Hang on, I’ll just see who it is. No – on second thoughts–”

“You've given me a scythe! Thank you!”

“–maybe you should get the door.”

There’s something in the human mind that invites catastrophe.

We grow up with it, entertain ourselves with it, and throughout history, we’ve believed it to be close to us. I had Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as my childhood companion; I’ve enjoyed planning for the Zombie Apocalypse; these days, I’m as convinced as I need to be that Global Warming is really happening.

I don’t think I’m alone in that. But this is an odd kind of panic. Celebrities, activists and others are still trying to convince us that we have a problem. They’re not exactly facing resistance, and whole organisations are now dumping single-use plastic, but down here at “ordinary people” level there’s still a degree of inertia. How do We, capital W, shift that?

[If you’d prefer to replace Zombie Apocalypse in that list above, by the way, I could go with Plague – we were worried, weren’t we, that air travel would spread Ebola to the parts of the world where health insurance is rife?]

Life’s boring without an existential threat – discuss.

Maybe we just don’t know what to do.

There’s a quiet movement gathering up waste plastic, taking milk cartons to the recycling centre, et cetera, but there’s a noisier, less organised movement dropping litter and eating/drinking out of non-recyclable plastic containers. Smoking roll-ups and dropping the filters.

I’ve seen panic. It doesn’t look like this. Felt it, too. Doesn’t feel like this.

Maybe we do know what to do, but we don’t think our own contribution is significant enough to matter. What’s one plastic bottle in the scheme of things?

I don’t know how to answer that, except to say that as the years go by, I become increasingly convinced that we have more of a collective consciousness than we realise. We’re all against certain things that we weren’t against a generation (or two) ago, and no leader, no government, no single influencer caused that change.

We were nudged, yes, but what really happened was: we just changed our minds – our mind. And they – it – stayed changed.

One day, perhaps, dropping a plastic bottle, or a cigarette butt, will be as unacceptable as downing a final double whisky before climbing back into the muscle car and hitting the road at pedestrian-killing speed. But not yet.

We’re not quite ready to stop teetering on the brink of climate change. I suspect that might be it. There’s something in the human mind, et cetera.

There’ll come a day when – I don’t know – food prices go through the roof. The global tobacco crop fails. Whole states, whole countries (and not just small ones) disappear under rising sea levels. I don’t know what it will take.

But on that day, we’ll fix it. Try to fix it. Perhaps fail. Definitely fail.

On that day, we’ll be too late. We need to act now. But how do we shrug off the inertia? Get past that something in the human mind?

Perhaps – I’m more than half serious about this – we need to find the next existential threat before we can move on from this one. If we could buy into the next imminent catastrophe, we’d no longer need to teeter on the brink of this one.

Maybe government agencies could tell us a different scary story. Maybe then – about two-thirds serious, given that after all the official talk and target-setting, there’s still plastic blowing in the hedgerows – messing up the planet would become as boringly distasteful as drink-driving. [Yeah, dangerous too, but my whole point is, that doesn’t seem to work as a primary concern.]

Hey, NASA, we need you now! Isn’t there anything heading towards us on a collision course? Are you sure? Check again. Centres – sorry, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doesn’t anybody contagious ever get on an aeroplane anymore?

And you in the global food industry – yes, you! Enough with the healthy alternatives! We need comfort food, now!

Oh. Wait.

Words to avoid, at the start of a short piece of writing, are “The” and “I”.

They’re not strong words. “The” was described to me, at the very beginning of my career, as “a deeply boring word” and I’ve stuck with that. I was eventually fired by the man who told me about “The”, but never mind. The company settled. I left by mutual consent. And bought myself a car to replace my company car.

No, there’s nothing actually wrong with starting your post, or your review, or your opinion piece with “The”, but if you want to give yourself an edge – don’t.

Get into the habit of thinking about strong words, action verbs, attention-getting starts, rhythm, active, yada yada, blah blah, droning on, dozing off – Boo!

Surprise is good.

Don’t introduce yourself, either, or explain what you’re writing. “Start in the middle,” somebody once said. If your readers are caught by the start, they’ll pick up the rest as you go along.

“I” is a more recent problem.

It’s typically coupled with “think” or “believe” or “really believe”, and the only difference between those three is that “I really believe” implies “I state this as fact” whereas the other two stop at “I know better, so here beginneth the lecture.”

“I” starts a piece in which the writer is thinking about – do we say “themself” nowadays? I’m not sure – thinking about himself, given that I can see him in my mind’s eye and he’s definitely a “himself” with that moustache and – ugh! – those rippling muscles; how does he do that? – rather than thinking about you, the reader, and what you might want to read.

I lost a comma somewhere in there. Maybe I should go back and count the dashes – nah. It makes enough sense as it is.

If you’re going to start a piece with “I”, remember the reader, and bear in mind that you’re writing a confessional rather than a lecture. “I love you” is good, as is “I will pay you double what you’re getting now to come and work for me.” But any variation on “I believe what we should do about Brexit is…” should be avoided.

The problem with opinions is that nobody wants to know what you think. There are people who like to debate “The Issues”, but that’s a matter for consenting adults and most of them are just waiting for their turn to talk, rather than listening.

Telling us what you think isn’t going to change what we think. Not these days.

But enough about that. “I” is self-reflection while writing is communication. There’s a mirror in “I” that can interrupt your view of the reader.

Use “The” and use “I”. You can’t avoid them. They’re useful. Necessary.

But if you start a piece with either of them, be aware of what you’re doing.

In the recent past, I’ve been told that my paragraphs should be shorter (tick), and that the background image makes – made; it’s gone now – this page look old-fashioned (reluctant tick).

Now it turns out that I’m interesting when I write about writing.

I’m not asking for all this advice – except that last bit: see Obvious enough for you? below – but I’m getting it. Oh, and I’ve also received a fair amount of unsolicited guidance recently on my profile pic, personal appearance and – never mind. What is "brand identity" anyway?

If I start writing about writing, though, I’m going to forget to write about everything else. So here’s just a quick summary of my views on all the major issues of today except writing. I may revise them, go back to them, et cetera, but just in case I don’t, here’s what I think about…

Brexit. You are absolutely right. Thank you for explaining your views at such length. Yes. No, I do understand; no need to explain again. Oh – is that the time? Sorry, I must have dozed off; I really have to go.

The President of the United States of America. Uh huh. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you, sure, exactly, it’s – look, I really must go. Yes, you said that. Look, I agree with you. He is, yes, absolutely, but I have to go.

The Weather. Weird, isn’t it? We shouldn’t complain, but.

Global Warming. Look, I’m not arguing with you. I agree. I agree! I said I’m not disagreeing with you. But surely the question isn’t whether it’s happening, but what do we do about it?

Strong Leadership. Yeah, right, absolutely; we do need strong leadership to sort out all our problems. But have you seen the news recently?

British Politics. Really? Really? I thought it was a satire. You’re not serious.

Strong Leadership. Or studied history?

Weak Leadership. Ditto?

Baked Beans. Do you remember, a few months back, people talked about stocking up on cans, in case Brexit or some other catastrophe disrupted food supplies? They’ve gone quiet, haven’t they? Thinking it through, perhaps. I'd keep quiet if - but I haven't! There's nothing in that big cupboard! I keep it padlocked because - it's empty! That's why!

Climate Change. Yeah, but could we do something about it? No, I’m agreeing that they’re to blame. Absolutely. They’re the guilty ones. Yes! They're going to feel really bad! Ha! So there! But could we do something about it now?

Liberal Democracy. No-platform the lot of them, frankly. We must defend our values. Uh, could you just run through your definition of “liberal” again, maybe? And yes, that referendum was such a bad idea that we definitely need another one to bring us to peace and harmony, ha ha. Oh, you're serious.

Beach Cleaning. Happens a lot around here. In the absence of strong leadership, and in defiance of weak leadership, maybe people taking their own steps to clean up the planet is a good idea, yes?

Greenhouse Gases. Alternatively, we could book the town hall for a meeting, and agree a declaration that we’ve agreed targets to reduce the town’s greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025?

Artificial Intelligence. Artificial stupidity, don’t you mean? Maybe we could harness the power of technology to solve all our problems? Or spend all that money on feeding, educating and housing actual people? Children, even? Build a human future?