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Welcome to part three of this literary adventure – a fusion of my life story and a personal quest to pass on as many writing lessons and tips as I can. If you’ve missed the first two parts then it may be worth spending a moment or two reading back, for context if nothing else. You will have also missed a few writing lessons that could help your own journey into becoming published. Here goes…

I became the proud father of twins almost exactly two months to the day that I returned home from a weekend away to find that my brother, Simon had hanged himself in my kitchen. I’d driven home to find his car parked outside, and was fearful he may have forced his way in through a window and be waiting for me inside the house (something that had been happening regularly). Simon was, of course, inside the house but in a way I never expected. The police took me to the hospital later that day to do a formal identification. The washing line was still tightly in place, his skin puffed and bruised, and there it remained until the coroner had done his work. At least there was a certain kind of peacefulness to him now.

Sadly now, I had a new selection of horrific images to try to keep boxed up inside my head. My mindbox. I had done a pretty good job of reducing my intake of illicit substances leading up to the twins’ birth. I was resolute that I didn’t want to be ‘that kind of Dad’. I had been given the most perfect gift and I wanted to be as present as I could be. My strategy of blanking out the traumatic events of my past – the seemingly endless lost weekends up in smoke – had come to an end.

I wasn’t about to mess up the fresh possibility of happiness I had been given by being an imperfect father. I also had something more to prove. I wanted to undo the mistakes that had come from my own strict Methodist upbringing. I wanted to erase in part the way my own father had brought me up and make sure my twins didn’t suffer the same fate. Of course, I don’t apportion any blame to my father, I believe that his intentions were generally good and that he simply did his best, but I was sure that I could do better. I wanted to be there, entirely present, and for the longest time the twins and my step-daughter, Alex enabled me to do just that.

When the twins reached four years old, my marriage collapsed. I was thirty-four. I returned home from a normal day at work to find that I was no longer needed in the relationship. My replacement had already been sourced; indeed unbeknown to me he had been selected a full six months prior. I had just been left out of the story, until now. There was no discussion, my belongings were packed, and I was shooed from my home. The bed I had slept in the night before never to be slept in again. Home became a two bedroom bungalow with my parents within a solitary day.

My mindbox, which until now had ably held in all the graphic images and darkest thoughts, was now splitting on all sides. I was no longer able to control it. I had reached a point where I only saw my children two days a week instead of the usual seven. I was left with time, too much of it, and knowing I didn’t want to return to the nihilism of my twenties I decided that the time had come to let everything out.

I spread all my journals out on the floor and spent evening after evening reading and noting down ideas. Thoughts. Emotions. Plans for a novel. But, which one? How do I start. Where do I start? I would wake regularly on the lounge floor, unsure why I was there. I spent so many nights sobbing – I so wanted to share the thoughts in my head but I couldn’t make sense of them. I couldn’t write a story because every thought in my head was colliding with another. Imagine a vehicle pile-up on a circular track, where the first car hits the second, which hits the next until the last car hits the first and the pattern repeats. And it just wouldn’t stop. Every thought bumped into the next, and every idea left my head almost as soon as it arrived. I frantically tried to write them down, or dictate them whilst driving. I had so much material to go at, I just needed to separate it. Like untangling a ball of wool. Then, I read an interview with Stephen King who suggested that the unpublished novelist who doesn’t know where to start should simply write about what they know. What they have lived. And of course, he was right. Lesson Four, write about what you know. At least at first.

I sat down to write my first novel The Radio at thirty-five years old after a full year of procrastination. In fact, if I am being candid I wasn’t writing a novel. It was a semi-autobiographical legacy piece. Life had become so unbearably difficult and the enormous pressure of the events of my past (which of course, I’d not dealt with) had left me truly uncertain about how long my life would continue. I wanted to leave something for my children, just in case. I wanted them to hear my story, told from my own perspective. It was something I hoped they’d understand in the future, even if that future didn’t include me.

And out of nowhere, I discovered the most beautiful two words an author can ever discover. What and if. My first novel, The Radio was to tell the story of how my brother had taken his own life and what the effect of that is on those left behind. I began to write, but applied What If to the story. What if instead of X happening, Y happens instead. It’s such an easy trick. You can do it all day every day if you just observe the world around you. Take this example:

The reality: Someone steps off a bus carrying a bag of groceries. They walk for a short while along the pavement and turn the corner and are soon out of sight.

The possibility: What if, however, when they stepped off the bus the shopping bag they were carrying split. And the contents of the bag roll across the street. What if, on the other side of the street is a homeless guy who dashes out to grab the free food. And then, what if, a car is coming a little too quickly around the corner and hits the homeless guy. And then, what if, the driver of the car is a well-known celebrity. And what if, they are with someone who is not their wife. And what if, they’ve been drinking are over the limit.

Now, I know, that’s a kind of crap little story, but it was all made up on the spot. At the moment I wrote it. Off the top of my head. And therein lies Lessons Five and Six. Observe everything. And then what if it.

So, back to The Radio. Having been paralysed by fear as to how to write a book, I eventually decided to dive in. Too many months had been wasted sketching out ideas and storylines. I wrote down in one simple paragraph: what the story was about and how it was to end. I decided against plotting characters, plotting chapters, plotting full story lines and scenes; to me these are all surplus to the enjoyment of the creativity. They are ways of delaying actually starting. It’s so easy to sit and procrastinate as to how something will turn out. In the end, we find that inertia wins. Too much plotting just strangulates the process. The characters can’t breathe. Everything is too pre-ordained. Nothing is allowed to flow. Lesson Seven: have a basic idea – a paragraph summary of the story and a sentence setting out how you want the story to end – and just fucking start, already.

I drafted the first chapter. It took me around twelve hours and it sounded okay. I kind-of liked it. Then, I closed the study door and left it alone for a week. It was like having some untamed creature living in the study. A creature that I knew was there, but I didn’t quite dare face again. When I finally had the courage to go back, I reread the eleven pages I’d created and was still fairly pleased. It was clear though that it could be better, and so I spent another week or so working on it. Again, I left it. For weeks, every few days I would return to it: reading it (again) amending it (again). After a month, it was perfect. Indeed, it simply could not be more perfect. I was delighted.

Onto chapter two. The same thing happened. I wrote. Left it. Wrote again and left it. But in chapter two the lead character, the ever-hapless George Poppleton’s character changed slightly. And now chapter one no longer rang true. I went back and perfected chapter one and then moved on. This continued throughout the novel. Every time one of the characters developed, I went back and changed all the chapters before. It was utterly laborious. My characters (with the benefit of dozens of what if about turns) were changing as the book went on. And each time they did, the whole manuscript was effectively rewritten. A novel of 70,000 words took more than three years. The whole process would have taken a tenth of the time if I had just pursued the story, and not the perfection of each and every sentence. (To put this in context, my last novel “337” took six weeks to write from start to finish).

Lesson Eight, and our final lesson for today: get the words down. It doesn’t matter how they sound at this stage. Just get the story down. You can perfect the sentence structures and insert those beautiful words that shine like polished glass in the edit stage.

So, although hopelessly inefficient, I was writing and I was loving every second of it. Yes, things were going great.

Really great.

Until they really fucking weren’t.

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Note from the author:

If anyone wants any clarity on anything written in this series please don’t hesitate to make contact. By arrangement, Richard can pass on my email address.

Jonathan