Chapter One.

Click here to download Chapter One of ‘Fables and Forgotten Thoughts,’ free.

The whole book will be available in the New Year from Amazon as an e-book.

Is writing a book a symptom of madness?

The idea of blogging is a new and slightly dangerous one for me, because so much nonsense goes through my head that I wonder if I can work out exactly what is interesting or coherent enough to write about. This could be risky.

I thought I would kick off by telling you about what the process of writing is like, or at least how it was for me. The most obvious thing I can think of to compare it to is madness. It is, for instance, quite normal to spend time babbling away to oneself about people that only exist in a made up region in the realms of imagination.

For me, writing is a need, a desire to share something that goes on internally and trying to fit it to what is going on in the world around you. Sympathetic friends give you the token five minutes listening time as you ramble on about your characters as if they were real, before you realise that the look in their eyes has become a mixture between a sort of glazed boredom and mild panic. To the relief of both of you, you change the subject. It is your duty, because although they would love to sympathise properly, nothing you talk about makes any sense until they have read the book, and paradoxically that is the last thing they are capable of doing until you’ve finished it. So for the most part you keep what you are doing to yourself.

The worst part of having to do this is that you are really never sure that what you are doing is any good. There is no point in soliciting an opinion until you have finished and can present a whole picture, but by then it will also be too late. What if the finished work is utter rubbish? You will have wasted at least a year, possibly more. So it is easy to see why many never get past the half way stage. By no means would I describe myself as confident, but I am obstinate. Extremely obstinate. So I have finished. The result? Well judge for yourself. I hope that you enjoy it, because I can honestly say that my highest aim is to entertain. And you will give me an excuse to call my madness ‘creativity’.