Wednesday 12 February 2014

Is a book written if it's never read?

About four years ago I went travelling after, no fault of my own (that's a lie), I was made redundant from my job working in 'the city.' The City being the magical land of the bankers. I worked as an analyst. I was in no way responsible for making you lose your money. I tried stopping them but they were to powerful a force, and my punishment, I was banished to walk the Earth...

That walk started in Peru but also covered Ireland, France, Egypt, India, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. In that time, two years in all, I discovered great solace in writing. So I began to write a story in Ireland. After six weeks I had finished. It was 120,000 words of pure nonsense. Embarrassed I threw the work away (deleted it in the modern day) and carried on with my life. I was in Australia at this point and I didn't need much of an excuse to go outdoors. You may have heard. It's warm.

Then, in a night of mosquito attacks, the arc angel inspiration appeared. It told me how I should shape my words into a story with a beginning, middle and end. It gave me a structure. It also told me I was a shit writer and needed to learn some basic rules.

The next few months I hoovered up what it is that makes a writer read well. I found out it wasn't flamboyance but simplicity that worked. Short sharp sentences were king. Stephen said the same. Thank god for the recycle bin...There she was waiting to be restored. Those 120,000 words were edited away. Rewritten and edited again so I was left with a completely new story of 70,000 words. Thinking I was finished I set off to Vietnam where I planned a month retreat in the hills of Sapa to complete the book. Then my laptop broke. So I had a holiday instead. 

Eventually I arrived back to London, and its air, which turned my optimism to pessimism. It wasn't good enough. I found myself re-editing the book once more. So another year of editing took place. Now we have arrived at the present. A novel, 54,000 words in length (roughly 300 pages), that has grown up with me and changed as I have. A representation of my writing style, personality and flair. So to answer the question posed at the beginning - Is a book written if it's never read? It doesn't matter. The journey to write the book was the truly important element.