I think of myself as a writer. It's an affectation and a conceit. It's a bit like Iain Duncan-Smith thinking of himself as a future Prime Minister. Or some analogy with someone who has an over-inflated expectation of their prospects.
I started young. I started by re-writing the classics. You know, I wrote a story about some children who spent their time messing about in boats in the Lake District.
Puberty approached and I turned to writing sex/love stories. Improbable fantasies about me having a romance/wild-fling with a pop star or footballer. I wrote them for the amusement of my class mates. When I developed crushes on celebrities, I wrote fantasies about me and them. I carried on doing this, off and one, until I was thirty two.
But it has often crossed my mind, that if I just sat down and applied myself that novel inside me would come out. I'm not saying it would be great, or even good, but it would be written.
On my computer I have a file of phrases lifted from the 'crush on celebrity' stories, phrases that I think are good, and can be incorporated into the future blockbusting Booker prize winner. About four years ago, I started going through my diaries from early teenage years, with the intention of completing the series. The objective was to extract events and emotions that could be recycled into a novel - a novel about teen angst. "I am so depressed, I've just realised that I will never be friends with a Manchester United footballer How can I survive without this?"
The advice that writers always give to novices is "Write about what you know." This is where I have always hit a stumbling block. What do I know? Of life, that is. I thought, maybe I could do a sex-and-auditing novel. But I doubt it would sell. I suspect there's a story to be written of the mismanagement and puerile politics of Lambeth council.
Where I lack is any real life experience. What have I done? Went from school to Uni to a proper job. Had a few short relationships on the way. Had a couple of bouts of depression at 18 and 32. I thought maybe it would be possible to look through blogs for inspiration, things people do. (I've always hesitated to use my friends' lives because they might be offended by a too-close-to-the bone portrayal).
But it always boils down to one major problem. I can imagine, and describe, a character. I can imagine a narrative where someone starts out being one sort of person, and through circumstance, changes into another - a goody-goody priggish type becomes a gangsterÂ’s moll; someone with a good degree from a good university starts accountancy training, fails her exams, loses her job, and ends up an alcoholic sleep around; someone who's bitter at life experiences genuine human concern from a geeky anorak and her outlook on life changes.
But it's so boring. There's no plot, no denouement, no suspense. So I think up unlikely but exciting situations which can really transform that person: related to a perpetrator of a notorious crime, or the conned into becoming a mule for the drugs baron boyfriend with whom she's infatuated, or suffering unbearable personal tragedy. In one of my 'infatuated-with-celebrity' attempts, I even created a situation where I was a novelist who was in a relationship with a well-known public figure, and wrote a novel whose contents were so shocking that I couldn't publish it in my own name because of the repercussions on him. I was able to summarise the plot and why it was so shocking (and all was revealed when we turned up together to the Booker Prize ceremony).
But I couldn't write a real novel.
See, I can't even bring this post to a satisfactory end: heaven only knows how a novel I wrote would end.
