One writer’s dream

I’m impatient. Once I make a decision, I want it all to have happened yesterday. Perhaps it’s because so much of my energy goes into the decision that it feels like there should be more in the world to show for it. But no, only a flimsy, invisible internal change has been made. Nothing solid, nothing I can point to, nothing that I can sit back and look at and say “yup, there it is.”

Making things become real in the world is hard for many people, for many reasons. Personally I feel like I am always running in the steeplechase event. I can see the finish line, but I have to go round and round in circles, clambering over huge obstacles, occasionally falling into cold water, risking and often falling prey to injuries with the constant sense of time running out.

Publishing Twenty Years Later is positioned at the finish line of an incredibly long track that I have been running around for far too long. It’s no surprise that it’s gone on so long; at several points I have been wearing a heavy pack called post-natal depression. I also juggle as I run, sometimes I worry so much about dropping something I forget to run and the race carries on around me. And the opponents? Only myself and time. So many of my grandparents died too young, with the sense that their lives were unfulfilled. I have so much in me, I have to run now to have a hope of moving on to the next event. There’s no guarantee I will even make it to the finish. It doesn’t stop me running though.

So where in the steeplechase are we now? Well, recently I made three commitments to you, and have been working on two of them a lot over the past couple of weeks. During that time I have “soft-launched” the first two podcasts of Twenty Years Later which you can see over there on the left. By soft launch I mean that I just mentioned it on Twitter, not here, where most people read.

The response to the prologue was amazing. People took the time to comment and send me messages on Twitter – and I find it hard to express just how important that has been. One of the most unexpected responses was to my voice – something I’ve never particularly valued about myself – but several people have commented on it. Weird…

I’ve found the podcasting immensely enjoyable so far, mostly because it’s making me think about that world I created again. For a long, long time its magic has been subsumed by editing, struggles to be published, all kinds of things. I thought the joy of writing the first draft and feeling my way through the story would never come back. Now I’m remembering why I spent so much time there.

It’s the sharing of it that is breathing life back in. When I read to you, I see it all in my mind again, hear the characters speaking, and do my utmost to try and convey that to you. I want to sweep you along with me. I want nothing more than to take you away from your normal lives and into post-apocalyptic London. I want you to meet the people there, see their struggles and, beyond all hope, forget your own for a few minutes.

I thought that getting the book published was the only way to achieve that goal. I know now that it’s not. This is my dream, to take you to other places, if you’ll let me try.

And this crystalline dream is in your hands. I will put a chapter up a week, if you can spare fifteen to twenty minutes to listen to each one, we’ll be halfway there to making it come true. If you listen, and are taken away into the story, then let me know – tell this grey shrivelled excuse of a writer’s ego that there is a reason to fight for this book. Humbly, I ask you to help me battle my self-doubt and fear, to cheer on the tired runner as she stumbles past for another circuit. I want nothing more than to shape this fiery, uncontrollable creative urge inside me into something real that gives other people pleasure. I want those people to be you.

Tagged as: fear, podcasting, twenty years later