I was a bit glum yesterday having experienced considerable difficulty trying to write a letter of condolence. However hard I try the result always seems unsatisfactory and unlikely to bring much in the way of comfort to the bereaved. It is just not one of my social graces (in the same way as the Cha-Cha-Cha is not one of my social graces).
Maybe I’m not built to be a writer. The Great British Novel is still my ambition but my attempts at putting pen to paper have not been going brilliantly well. My non-fiction debut was to have been the ultimate guide to running a business (written by someone who has made so many mistakes in this area that he knows it all). But it is very tedious penning predictable chapter after chapter. It’s rather like writing a school history essay where you are meant to use a formula to produce a passable result by plotting each paragraph to a specific theme (introduction, political impact, social impact, economic impact, etc., through to conclusion), so whatever the subject matter you have enough of a framework in place to scrape through your history A Level (as I did).
I’ve been studying prose styles and listening to interviews with contemporary authors who go on interminably about the months of careful planning, preparation, research, etc. Oh, how dull!
And then up popped Minette Walters on the radio yesterday. She was talking about her new book The Devil’s Feather and was asked about how she planned her books. She replied that when she wrote she had no idea how the plot would turn out, and that it would be extremely dull if she did. Her books just develop as she writes them.
That’s my kind of writing – utterly spontaneous. Now all I have to do is to get round to doing it.
