Taking The Jacket Off

Kettle is on, Mary is watching the TV, and I'm here, writing this. Something I’ve done day in, day out for years. Darkness is rolling in. Autumn now, and all that. 

I'll start with my archives. Bloody hell, what a mess. Not the archive itself. But what's in it. All those years of writing have left me with all sorts. Some of it good. Some of it great, and a lot of bollocks. 

The thing is, I'm sixty-one now. We all collect stuff in life. All sorts. One look in our attic confirms that. And my writing archive is no different. I've got hundreds of blog posts in there. Short stories, and the manuscripts for ten novels. Yeah, ten. Mad, right? 

Those novels? Written in discovery mode. And shite. Good bones, but they'd need a lot of work to make them publishable. Why didn't I do it? Get them out there? I did. With a few of them. And pulled them back in again. Because they were inconsistent. 

I had noir techno-fiction. Almost cyberpunk. Then, comedy novels. Absurdist, anarchic. Then, gritty working-class tales from ordinary life. A mess. Two of them remain live on KDP. The gritty working-class ones. 

Here's where the trouble started. My comedic influences come from the best in British comedy. Spike Milligan, Monty Python, Tom Sharpe, and Douglas Adams. 

I wrote for a long time, wearing their jackets. I'd write mad Goon-ish humour. Cosmic farce and Pythonesque sketch material. The whole lot was brilliant fun to write. 

You know what, though? Trying to play in the same arena as those legends gave me a right crick in my neck. I had to stop. Find a new way. My own way. 

The truth is, I'm old and tired. Which is funny itself. Loads of material in that. I realised that the good stuff is out there. Sitting in greasy spoon cafés, supermarket aisles, the workplace, and the silence of a kitchen after a long shift.

I don't need spaceships, magic umbrellas, or exploding toasters. What I require is me, being me. Talking about ordinary life. Because it's already bonkers. 

Right, the kettle’s boiled. I'll pop off and make that brew. My jacket is off and over the back of the chair. 

Oh, wait. What will you be getting? 

Simple true-life stories. Like this one. And simple life stories that are fictional. But the characters will feel real. 

Now I'm done. See you next time.