My True Vocation

One summer’s day, as driving rain pelted the window of the Daily Depress newspaper office, I spotted an advertisement for a creative writing course in the Algarve.
The advertisement promised a complete refund of the cost of the course, if I didn't earn it back from selling my writing, and it changed my life.

As soon as I arrived on the holiday [I mean creative writing course], Clive, the tutor, spotted my latent talent.

He insisted on offering me intensive, one-to-one coaching.

I returned from the Algarve after two weeks, spent.

Fortunately, I also somehow managed to find the time - and energy - while I was there to learn how to write novels.

On my return, I left my job in journalism, realising that my true vocation was to be a visionary novelist.
A sad loss for the newspaper, of course, but a great gain for the world of literature.

Wine

Never buy wine boxes.
Always buy bottles of wine.

Why? you may ask.
The reason is simple.

Wine boxes are for writers who drink wine in excessive quantities.

Wine boxes are for writers who drink wine every day.

Wine boxes are for writers who want to forget that their readers are only interested in the characters they have created. Not in them, the writers, let alone the daily challenges they face as a visionary novelist.

Take my advice. Always buy wine in bottles.

Dear Friend

While I was still trying to find a publisher for my first novel, I received the following letter.
I realised at once that this letter was an attempt to seduce me into a Conceit Publishing contract.
Had I allowed myself to be seduced, I would have paid a large amount of money in order to have my ego boosted and my spare bedroom filled with books.
The letter read:

Dear Willow - or may I address you as Dear Friend?

May I tell you that your manuscript is the most wonderful, most thrillingly original novel ever to have the privilege of being written.

Your story haunts me, day and night. I fall asleep with your vivid characters still living out their incredible, fascinating, yet totally realistic and credible, lives, inside my head.

The settings, which unfold like a marvellous, panoramic tapestry, are etched in my imagination as if by the blade of an enchanted sword.

The story’s dialogue whispers to me like the fragile voices of forest sprites.        

Your plot and sub-plots echo in my soul like the primeval dreams of all mankind.

Your story rivets, disturbs and amuses. It resonates, in truth, at the exact frequency of the human condition.

So enthralled was I by your manuscript, I forgot to eat, to pay my bills and pay my mortgage. My home was plunged into darkness, as the electricity supply was cut off. I lit a candle and went on reading.

An icy chill gripped me, as the gas was cut off. I wrapped blankets around my shivering body and went on reading.

People came and took away the furniture and the carpets. I sat on the bare floor and went on reading your novel.

My home was repossessed. I sat in a cardboard box on the Embankment and went on reading.

I dedicate the rest of my existence to ensuring that your novel is published. I can then relinquish my grasp on life with a sigh of contentment, knowing I have fulfilled my purpose.

I enclose a standard publishing agreement. Please sign it and return it, along with a cheque made payable to Creative Truth Publishing, to the office address.

Yours sincerely

Dominic Blarney

Managing Director

Creative Truth Publishing

Emotional Anguish

Some people think writers live in their own worlds and have difficulty in forming romantic relationships.
They are totally wrong, for I am in love with a wonderful man.

My feelings for him would be mere, gross, bodily lust if he were stupid and ordinary, but he is handsome, slim, fit, lissom, with muscles that ripple gently but purposefully when he moves. He is intelligent, sensitive, refined and artistic.
All of this means that my feelings for him are not lust, but a profound, lasting and deeply spiritual love.

Knowing that he seethes with repressed passion which waits only for the right woman – me - to ignite its flame, yet that he is unaware that I exist, is very difficult for me.

I find the only way to dull the sharpness of my pain is to drink red wine in large quantities.

But the escape from suffering is only temporary for, always, the bottle is eventually empty.

Actually, it isn’t eventually, it’s infuriatingly quickly.

At night, I dream that he and I talk for hours, discovering one another’s innermost thoughts and feelings and understanding each day a little better why we are soul mates.

More importantly, we bonk one another's brains out.

In reality, though, it can never happen for, although Paul Heartfelt would, of course, love me in return if we were to meet, he is a character in my novels.

What tragic irony! I created the perfect man for me and I am unable to get my hands on him.

Still, as I learned on the holiday - I mean creative writing course - in the Algarve, the best fiction writing comes out of emotional anguish.

Shop Until You Drop

I decided to investigate the overhead glass walkway in the new Hedonist’s Heaven Retail Therapy Centre to see whether it might be a suitable place for Shannon to fall from.

To my amazement, when I arrived intent on literary research, I found hundreds of shops.
Mentally adding a new method for future murders – to force the victim to shop until they dropped – I began my work.

Two and a half hours later I was eating lunch in the Conspic Consum Café. Gazing up at the glass walkway, I wondered whether it was the thought of Shannon falling to her demise making me so hungry, or the severe emotional trauma I had suffered during the morning.

Young Darren had been rearranging the display just inside a sport shop. He glanced up, a pair of rollerblades dangling from his hand, and looked at me.

Unable to resist the lure of his big brown eyes and his small white T-shirt I feigned an interest in the rollerblades. All was going well until the credit card machine bleeped at me to remove my card.

I looked up, about to suggest to Darren that perhaps we could meet up at the Centre’s rink so that he could teach me some moves.
Darren smiled at me, handed me my purchase, logged off his till and left the shop with a stick insect in a micro-skirt.

There was only one way to recover from that kind of pain and it was to buy myself a pair of leather trousers.
To squeeze myself into them required me either to lose a few pounds, or have part of my stomach chiselled off.

I hadn’t yet decided between those.

As for the combined corkscrew and breathalyser, that purchase was an essential part of the healing process.

A Satisfying Splat

During my second bottle of wine, it occurred to me that a fall [well, a good shove] from a high place had a lot to recommend it. No other method was quite so dramatic.

No other method was quite so visually satisfying.

No other method would provide a satisfying splat.

Even Shannon would derive a degree of pleasure as she realised what an unforgettable impression she was making on horrified bystanders as she hurtled towards them.
She would fall silently, save for a single scream, not of fear but of defeat, as she accepted that she would no longer be able to protect the world from mediocrity, apathy and negativity.

As she fell, she would have time - Shannon was a quick thinker – to think back on her life and all the wonderful things she had done before her big Raspberry Jam Moment.

And all this would take place following a dramatic final battle, high above the ground, between the forces of Good and Mediocre. A battle which culminated in Green Drawers toppling from…

From where, exactly?

Time for some more research.

Better a Potboiler than a Bunny Boiler

No common old weedkiller for Shannon. I needed some advice.

I reached for the phone. “Jake! It's been a little while since we talked.”

“Not long enough,” he replied.

I asked him how he was and he told me, at length.

Finally, he paused for breath. “I'm so glad everything's going well for you.”

“My wife's left me for my father, my son's married four Mormon women, and the pet python's eaten the cat. And you think things are going well?”

“Perhaps they could be better,” I conceded. “Anyway, Jake, what can I buy over the counter which will poison someone fatally?”

Jake explained that poison wasn’t available over the counter these days, and asked snidely if I’d been reading Victorian potboilers again.

“Better than that bunny boiler you’re married to,” I retorted, remembering too late what he had just told me about his wife leaving him.

Pity about the poison, I thought, as I imagined Shannon clutching her throat, her expression one of utter astonishment, as her body locked into a toxic paralysis. Or would she expire in an undignified frenzy of agitated limbs, revealing her famous green underwear?

Oh, well. I still had one more murder method to investigate. And I had resumed contact with an old friend, I thought, as I hung up the phone on Jake’s rantings.

The Personal Touch

Next on the list was stabbing.
Stabbing had the personal touch in a way that shooting didn’t, as it required the perpetrator to be close to the perpatree.

I needed to choose a murder weapon. I arranged my collection of knives, saws and artisan swords on my living room floor and stared at them, wondering how I could decide.

I remembered what Clive, the tutor on my holiday - I mean creative writing course - in the Algarve said: “If in doubt, act it out.”

If Clive were here – I knew he couldn’t be, because he wasn’t due for release for another year - he would suggest I tried out all the potential murder weapons, which was the reason he wasn’t here. Some people just don’t know where the boundary between fiction and reality lies.

Forty minutes later, I had whittled it down to a choice of just two: the carving knife and the three-inch long knife I bought as a souvenir in the Algarve.

The carving knife was most satisfying to use, but a little difficult to explain: “Just on my way to an emergency Sunday roast, Constable” might not be convincing enough.

Brian, as I called the little knife, on the other hand, could be concealed quite easily.

“Here’s to research,” I said as I lifted my first glass of wine to my lips. It had been fun, at least for me, although I wasn’t sure the satsuma, the kiwi fruit or the Granny Smith would see it in quite the same way.

Attack by Potato Gun

Shooting Shannon seemed a very positive action, although perhaps not from her point of view.

I began my research. The gun shop proprietor seemed surprised when I responded to his question “What do you intend to use the gun for?” with “For a murder.”

I watched with interest as he nearly choked to death on his tea, and made mental notes about assisted choking as an alternative method.

When his face had paled to crimson, and he was able to speak once again, he gave me some bad news. Guns were hard to get hold of, it would appear, in Britain, unlike the United States where a gun was practically compulsory for everyone over the age of six.

On the way home I stopped at the toyshop to investigate weaving into my story a cultural link between one of their weapons and Shannon’s land of origin. Although I doubted that even a repeated attack by potato gun could be fatal, I bought one anyway so that I could shoot at my picture of Brian.

However, I was now sure that shooting wasn’t the right way to kill Shannon. Too much distance between perpetrator and perpetratee, and she wouldn’t be able to fight back. Shannon deserved to die in a way which allowed her to show her renowned courage.

After all, this would be her last chance to show off.

Decisions, Decisions

Just how many ways are there, I wondered, to remove phrases such as ‘”my little kelpie”, "The Main Fellow Himself” and "To be sure, to be sure" from the literary landscape?

I could think of a few.
Compression between the floor and the ceiling

Inflation with a balloon pump

Strangulation with her own green underwear

But I could see that there was a risk of the novelty factor eclipsing the all-important outcome: Shannon will be dead, and nobody will be able to like her better than any me any more. Perhaps it would be better to choose a more conventional murder method.
I made a new list.

Shooting

Stabbing

Poisoning

Falling from a high place.

“Being a novelist is a wonderful vocation,” I remarked as I opened the first bottle of wine of the evening.  “How else could I spend all day writing lists, and all evening drinking wine, and earn a living?”

Of course, it wasn’t all fun, but a demanding, challenging, emotionally draining activity. What did the world understand of writer’s block, self-doubt, the times when the struggle to create hardly seems worthwhile?

Nothing. I didn’t understand it, either. Only inept novelists suffered from all that nonsense. Talented ones, like me, just got on with it, and wrote.

A Difference of Artistic Opinion

I phoned Brian, rather than going to his office, to save having to get into disguise. I was busy and I had things to do. Like kill Shannon.

Brian answered quickly. [I’m sure he has installed a hidden camera in my apartment, to find out what I look like.]

I explained the interesting new development in my novel.

It quickly became clear that we had a difference of artistic opinion.

“Willow,” Brian shrieked, sounding like a budgerigar trapped in an egg timer with its brother, “You can’t kill Shannon.”

“Why not?” I asked, yawning. This was boring and I had things to do. Like kill Shannon.

“Willow, do you remember that chat we had recently? About the connection between your books selling, and your income?”

I laughed. “You’ve been sniffing correction fluid again, haven’t you? I told you, this supposed connection is just a conspiracy theory.”

“Shannon has to stay alive. She’s going to keep you in the lifestyle to which you are apparently addicted.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s your pension.”

“Since when has payment in shops been accepted in the form of short women with Dublin accents?” I demanded.

“Shannon isn’t short.”

I grinned. Compared to Brian, nobody was short.
I went on, “Fiery and feisty she may be, but can I burn her in my fireplace?”

“You don’t have a fireplace,” Brian interrupted, proving that I was right about the hidden camera.

“If I had a fireplace. I couldn’t burn her. The same goes for fuel for my barbeque.” I paused to find out whether he’d fall into the same trap, and let me know that he knew I didn’t have a barbeque either, but he stayed silent. “So, fiery though she is, how she can be my pension is a mystery to me. Goodbye, Brian.”

The conversation had become boring and I had things to do. Like kill Shannon. I hung up the phone.

Nine and a Half Reasons

I have nine and a half reasons to kill Shannon O'Shaughnessy, the central character in my novels.
1. She’s more popular than I am.

2. She works with Paul Heartfelt, the man I love.

3. She’s more popular than I am.

4. She calls people “my little kelpie.”

5. She’s more popular than I am.

6. Brian will say I shouldn’t kill her.

7. She’s more popular than I am.

8. It won’t be a real murder.
8.5. Shannon doesn’t really exist. She’s only a character in my books. However, she will try to convince you otherwise. Don’t take any notice of her. This is probably one half a reason as it relates closely to 8.

9.5 She’s more popular than I am.

A Second Opinion

As some readers will know, people can only be killed once.

The correct version of the wrong statement in my previous posting is:

Friday, 13th October was a memorable evening. I made my first decision to kill someone.

The date was indeed unlucky for fiery, feisty, flame-haired, emerald-eyed, green underwear-clad Shannon O'Shaughnessy, being the someone I had decided to kill.

Making the decision was difficult. Extremely difficult. I agonised. I drank wine. I agonised some more. I drank more wine.

Finally, I decided I needed a second opinion.
“Willow, do you think I should kill Shannon?” I asked myself.

I waited expectantly for the answer.

“Yes,” I heard.

“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”

I sighed. “Oh, all right, then.”

Making Lists and Drinking Wine, not necessarily in that order

Some people think the writing life is all about making lists and drinking wine, not necessarily in that order.
However, this belief is quite wrong.
Novelists also have to make decisions.

It is important, when it comes to making decisions about one’s novels, for a writer to consider all the possibilities and take into account the likely outcomes of each one.

This is what I read in one of the books I bought on how to write novels.
That book is now propping up my bookcase, being useful for the first time.

The book is wrong. I quickly discovered that, in reality, decisions about my novels are best made while I am drinking the second bottle of wine of the evening.
It can’t be the first bottle, because it really is not possible to reach an intelligent decision in forty seconds.

Friday, 13th October was a memorable evening. I decided to kill someone for the first time.

Of course, I am well aware that this is wrong, very wrong indeed.

My Characters Are Plotting Against Me

Life is full of challenges.
For a start, my characters are plotting against me.
Brian, my literary agent, is another challenge. He disagrees with me as a matter of principle.

For example, he tells me that it is my unconscious desire to sabotage my own success which makes me believe my characters are plotting against me.

He also says that if I listen to what my characters are telling me, I’ll become a better writer.

I tell Brian that if I listen to what my characters say, I’ll be insane because they’re not real people and it was me who created them and how dare they decide to plot against me?

A Visionary Novelist

I always wanted to be a cartoonist.
Even as a child, I longed to create unforgettable characters and describe their adventures through fast moving, energetic drawings, admired by people all over the world.

As I grew up, however, there emerged a slight snag.
My ability to draw is only as good as my ability to perform a frontal lobotomy on myself while opening a bottle of wine.

Despite one literary critic writing that doing the former might be a good idea, and that perhaps I should do the latter rather less often, I have decided to use my talents, instead, to become a novelist.
Not just any novelist, however, but a visionary novelist.