Creative Writing Course - 5th week's homework.

Our homework task was to try to write a complete short story - something with a beginning, a middle and an end. I knew I was going to have trouble with this because I use too many words. I get so rapt in the detail of the story, which I believe a reader needs, that I can't reach the conclusion concisely enough. Doug wanted us to aim for a thousand words. I've written emails to the taxman longer than that.

Still wishing to shake off my reputation for being cynical, I wrote a charming short story based on a youtube video I'd seen of a stray dog rescuing another stray dog from a six-lane highway in Chile. I completed it on the day we were due back after the half-term holiday, and knew it was total rubbish. Unfortunately, Juren was away and I had no one who could look after Ethan that night, so I sent apologies for my absence. This was perhaps fortunate, as once again I had failed to read my homework instructions properly and had forgotten that Doug had asked that the story be about the sea. My Alzheimer's seems to be getting worse lately. During a Facebook chat with a classmate, I learnt that this next week's homework was to take on board the comments of the class and improve the short story. Obviously, they had not heard my awful construction on completely the wrong subject, and so I had been thrown a lifeline. All I had to do was write a new short story (about the sea this time), critically analyse it myself, and improve it. Yeah right!  Nonetheless, the following is what I produced. I’m not entirely happy with it. It's too damned long and consequently a couple of my peers suggested it sounded more like travel writing than short story. Please leave your comments at the end.

Maldivian Mystery

The warm jets of the Jacuzzi massaged him sensuously as he watched the first dim light of dawn penetrate the starlit sky. He was sipping champagne, celebrating his good fortune to have landed in paradise. The flight he had stumbled across on the internet had brought him to Male, The Maldives’ capital from where he had transferred to Bandos, one of the larger resort islands, a short speedboat ride away. He had spent three self-indulgent days, sunbathing, reading and snorkelling on the kaleidoscopic reef. The euphoria of having a Hawksbill Turtle accompany him on his last subaquatic exploration had so far been the highlight of the trip.

Afeef, the resort’s customer services manager was a man who spoke six languages and wore a permanent smile. Afeef had befriended him on his first night on the island. He had just gone off duty and Jason had perhaps looked in need of company, surrounded as he was by couples celebrating their nuptials - some recent, some decades ago. They had chatted about their individual worlds, their customs and religion – or lack of it in Jason’s case, and had swapped notes about their respective careers. Jason had been in awe of The Maldivian work ethic that involved staff like Afeef, working in the resorts away from their families, for months at a time. He had expressed his envy at being unable to recruit such dedication for his restaurant back home in England, and had joked that Afeef would always have a job waiting for him if he ever decided to leave paradise for somewhere colder and wetter.


The island had contracts with several airlines to provide accommodation for aircrews who had reached their maximum flying hours. Afeef needed an additional beach house to accommodate an incoming crew and had asked if Jason would oblige him by transferring to Cocoa Beach, their newly opened resort in a neighbouring atoll. Whilst reluctant to leave Bandos so soon, the chance to explore another island was irresistible. His new friendship with Afeef would have also made refusal discourteous, and so that night he had packed his single backpack ready to board a boat the next morning. Afeef, whilst grateful for his acquiescence, had seemed genuinely sorry to be saying goodbye as they shook hands on the quayside. 


Cocoa Beach was a tiny island, even by Maldivian standards. It seemed nothing more than a crescent shaped sand bank rising less than a metre out of the Indian Ocean. The only building on the island was the reception office and restaurant. The guest accommodation consisted of individual, reproduction dhonis, the traditional boat of the Maldives, seemingly floating above the reef but built on stilts and tethered to a long boardwalk.

The dhoni was luxurious and had a marble bathroom with a sunken bath, a shower cubicle with space enough for more fun than showering, and enough cotton towels stacked on teak shelves to dry any number of guests. A huge, teak bed upon which a mosaic of a turtle had been created from the pink petals of the Finifenmaa, the Maldivian national flower, dominated the bedroom which also housed his and hers matching wardrobes, dressers and writing desks. Even the stationery, printed with the resort’s letterhead and roughly cut from rustic parchment, exuded the luxury normally afforded to the privileged few. The coffee table in the lounge was effectively a glass-topped well, the lid of which lifted to allow the feeding of the fish on the reef below. On the other side of a full width, sliding glass door lay an outside deck with sun loungers, and the Jacuzzi in which Jason was now luxuriating. From here, a flight of wooden steps led down to the shallows of the reef.

The sound of rain on the sea caught his attention. He narrowed his eyes in the dawn murk but saw nothing as the sound ceased as suddenly as it had started. A few seconds later, it returned, causing him this time to sit up and peer intently across the reef towards its direction. Again, it ended abruptly leaving an eerie silence in its place. He climbed from the Jacuzzi and slipped on a robe as he scanned the reef for clues to the origin of the sound. None of the neighbouring dhonies displayed signs of life. He knew many were empty, as the island was in its first season and had yet to attract sufficient numbers of the type of guests who could afford the $1000 a night price tag.


As he surveyed the water, the darkness of the rocks and coral beneath the surface appeared to shift. He assumed it was a trick of the early light, casting shadows on the gently surging waves. Then he heard the sound again. It reverberated from about thirty metres away, where the dark patch below the sea, pulsated and swirled as though a living entity.

Curiosity gnawed at him until he could no longer resist the urge to explore. According to the guidebooks, there was little out there that could harm him, and Jason continued to reassure himself of this whilst donning his snorkelling kit. Swimming from the steps of the dhoni, the bright, colourful undersea world he had experienced all week seemed gloomy and intimidating in the half-light of dawn. He finned quietly and smoothly through the water, pausing periodically to check his position in relation to his dhoni, which was the only one with a light on. As he drew near to his target, he heard the sound again. He stopped to clear condensation from his mask as hundreds of fish leapt from the ocean in unison a metre or two ahead of him to create the pattering sound he had mistaken for rain. He hurriedly smeared his mask with spit before replacing it in order to view the spectacle unfolding before him. He submerged his face once more, and thousands of small fish moving in a single, writhing mass, enveloped him entirely. As he swam through them, it was as though they were pushing him in peristaltic fashion, from the front of the shoal to the back, where a bigger shock awaited him. Skip Jack Tuna with startling eyes and fierce teeth powered towards him in pursuit of their prey, causing him to raise his hands defensively in terror. He felt the stinging sensation of a single bite to his left hand and swung round frenziedly as the rest of the school swam round him. He watched in wonderment as the life and death ballet continued into the distance, until once again, the reef fell silent and forbidding.


He was coming down from his adrenaline high and beginning to enjoy the customary serenity as he snorkelled back toward his dhoni. His finger continued bleeding slightly, and the drops of blood created tiny wisps that rose to the surface. All of the tourism handbooks stated the reefs were safe. Most sharks were harmless and certainly, the waters were too warm for the notorious Great White. Jason had never been a diver. Perhaps if he had been, he would have heard of another shark, second in the list of attacks on humans and to which The Maldives was home.

Possibly attracted by the sound of the feeding frenzy he had just witnessed, or the aroma of his blood trickling from the innocuous wound to his finger, the Tiger Shark slid its five-metre frame silently through the water. The kill was mercifully efficient. Jason felt little or no pain as the shark sank razor-like teeth into his torso. There was little splashing to arouse the resort’s sleeping occupants, so Jason’s disappearance would go unnoticed for a couple of days. When eventually staff would become concerned, most evidence of his misfortune would have vanished. Of course, if any forensic evidence emerged later, it would be unthinkable to broadcast it publicly in a country reliant entirely on tourism. The investigation, as on numerous similar occasions, would result in a verdict of death by misadventure. This would be publicised, along with the usual warning of how swimming after drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, is extremely dangerous, even in the safe, marine paradise of The Maldives.

Creative Writing Course - 4th week's homework.

When Doug asked us to read out our monologues last week, it became obvious that I had somehow ignored that it was meant to be about an accident that we, or someone we knew, had had.  I sat there for a few seconds wondering how Alzheimer's had caused me to forget the accident part, before scurrying through my notes and reading the instructions I had written down.  The notes read 'Think about when you or someone else had an accident and write a monologue.'  Damn!  It was even in my handwriting too.  I quickly recalled what I had written, wondering if I could pass it off as being about a metaphorical accident, but Doug was looking at me as if he wanted me to go first, so I decided to come clean.


After I had read mine out, Doug graciously said that it could have been about an accident and that the purpose of the exercise had been to make us look inside ourselves and drag out something poignant.  Everyone else read out stories about falling into a swollen river, being hit by a car, being on a train behind one that was blown up in a terrorist attack, falling off a toboggan or being knocked off a motorbike and run over by a bus causing his kidney to 'pop'!  How my story of becoming a publican fitted I wasn't sure.  Maybe Doug was suggesting that my career had been an accident (actually he has a point) or that not following my notes had been an accident, I don't know.  He did say he liked it and that mine had been a true monologue, so at least I'd grasped the concept of  'monologue' if not 'accident'.  He then added 'it was cynical - like we've come to expect from you' which rather pleased me, because that was what I had intended to portray, but then I wondered if he was referring to me being cynical rather than the monologue.  Do I really come across like that?  Chambers lists the following synonyms for 'cynical' - sceptical, doubtful, doubting, distrustful, disillusioned, disenchanted, pessimistic, negative, critical, scornful, derisive, suspicious, contemptuous, sneering, unsentimental, surly, scoffing, mocking, sarcastic, sardonic, ironic, bitter, embittered, worldly-wise, streetwise.  Hmm...that would be a 'yes' then!  Besides, I believe Doug used to work for the Daily Mirror and ought to know.  Nonetheless, I made a mental note to produce next time, something uplifting and joyous, just to confound him.


This week's homework is to continue the following opening line with a couple of paragraphs which 'hook' the reader into continuing reading.  'The day after my eighth birthday, my father told me ...'  At first glance this looked promising.  I could write '...that we were going camping/fishing/boating for the very first time'.  Nothing cynical there, but not much of a hook either.  Some of the best 'hooks' are problems or crises that compel the reader to stay and find out how the character resolves them.  I can't get excited about someone pitching a tent or waiting for a fish to bite, (boating has potential but I feel the 'hook' would take longer than a couple of paragraphs to develop unless I sank it the second they cast off). It seemed Doug had done it again.  What, on the face of it had looked easy, was proving to be difficult.  I decided to approach the question from the eight year-old's perspective.  What would be one of the most painful problems for them to deal with?  With my cynicism already aroused, I wrote the following, and afterwards questioned where from inside me it came.

The day after my eighth birthday, my father told me I was the reason mother had killed herself.  He spat the words through clenched teeth, close enough for his spittle to sting my face.  I cowered in the corner, waiting for the inevitable beating.  I wished he would just get on with it.  I’d learnt to cope with physical pain years ago.  I didn’t even cry any more.  I’m sure that was why he no longer bothered beating me so hard.  He knew mental cruelty was much more harrowing and the scars less visible to doctors and social workers.

Later, in my room, I mopped the blood from my face with toilet paper.  I had stolen a roll from the bathroom the previous week, hoping he wouldn’t notice it was missing from the new pack.  Downstairs I could hear him crying as usual.  Poor dad.  I wished I didn’t hurt him so much.  I wanted to go down and give him a hug.  I wanted him to cuddle me.  I wanted to say sorry for being a bad son, but he would see my apology as a ploy to be allowed food or to watch TV.  That might start him off again.  My belly ached with hunger but I knew I didn’t deserve supper, as I hadn’t deserved lunch or breakfast.   So I stayed in my room, huddled under the sheet still damp from last night’s accident, hoping that by morning it would be dry and I wouldn’t have to tell him about it.

Creative Writing Course - 3rd week's homework.

Last week Doug, our tutor, asked us to write a monologue for our homework.  I was a bit worried about this because I thought it would be difficult.  I put it off all week until I had only one day left, and that sort of pressure can induce manic depression in a procrastinator like me.


Some twenty-odd years ago, I was a driving instructor.  I happen, also, to be teaching my wife to drive at the moment so I did toy with the idea of writing a personal perspective of what it is like to sit next to a learner driver without the benefit of dual controls.  However, my wife reads my blog and I knew I’d be unable to disguise my sarcasm.  For instance, this week, having almost stalled the car by arriving at a roundabout at 5mph, in fourth, she asked me a question she has asked many times before. ‘When should I put the clutch down if I’m stopping?’  I replied, whilst checking I still had all my fillings, ‘before the car shakes so violently you need a dustpan and brush to park it!’  Fortunately, we had started moving again and she was too busy worrying about getting round the roundabout to give me the slap she undoubtedly thought I deserved at the time.  I would be much more vulnerable if she were reading about her driving exploits next to me in bed with her manicure kit in close proximity, so I ruled out the subject, for health and safety reasons.


For the past twenty years, I have managed and owned various pubs.  There had to be loads of material lurking in those memories, but I couldn’t seem to think of anything to get me started.  Then I remembered a piece of writing I had done ten years earlier when on a solo trip to The Maldives.  I had booked the last minute bargain holiday to prepare me for the onslaught of Christmas at the busy pub I was running in Nottingham.  I spent an idyllic week in a tropical paradise, swimming on the most amazing reefs and sunbathing on hot, white beaches whilst scarcely avoiding skin cancer.  I read the only book I had taken on the first day, and the selection of literature on the tiny island was limited.  I also had an overwhelming desire to be creative, and so I began writing.  Nothing that I ever thought I would use, just a few cathartic paragraphs to complement the therapeutic benefits of being in another world.  That rambling monologue had survived on an old laptop and I have dusted it off for this week’s offering.

It is often said, usually by people who believe that getting regularly pissed makes them an expert, that being a publican is a way of life.  Running a pub, I know this is true, in its literal sense.  Whereas the average drunk who makes the statement, believes it to be a way of life to be much envied.  A vocation that brings such bountiful rewards and perks, as staying in bed until just before opening at 11am. Or getting to drink whatever and whenever one pleases - free of course, because all breweries are altruistic organisations who, in an attempt to encourage licensees to be sociable, give them a generous hospitality budget to give free drinks to any tosser who dumps himself at their bar.  The fact that they never witness me complying with my company's Policy of Philanthropy by giving away beer, does not discourage their assumption.  On the contrary, they see this as evidence that I must singlehandedly drink my hospitality budget, at the expense of their personal benefit, and this reinforces their view that my way of life is akin to what they hope God has in store for them when they fall off their bar stool for the very last time.  If I were not an atheist, I would hope that Beelzebub, (to whom God must surely devolve all responsibility for their eternal welfare) will fill their days with a well balanced timetable of cleaning shitty toilet bowls and vomit-filled urinals, whilst trying to do the job of at least two students, who took on bar work to avoid a student loan less than John Prescott's lard budget, but who subsequently forgot that a mutual part  of the deal was a requirement for them to drag their arses out of bed.  If the Lord of Darkness could also give them a generous hospitality budget to ensure they suffer in perpetuity the sort of hangover it is only possible to achieve from a three-day binge with Oliver Reed, then divine justice would have been done.

It's not that I'm unhappy with my lot you understand.  I've been running pubs for almost ten years, though mainly out of financial necessity for the last five.   Yet I do often catch myself wondering if I was ever cut out to run a pub at all.  I certainly wouldn't describe myself as an overly gregarious person.  I like people, and can converse reasonably competently on many social levels, but I prefer to be selective.  I do not enjoy being forced to feign interest in whatever drivel happens to be spewing forth from the Stella Artwatted manic depressive who feels compelled to keep me company during the full two hours of the 3 till 5pm graveyard shift, when I have much more satisfying things to do, like sanitising the ice machine or changing urinal blocks.

I got involved in the licensed trade, as I said, about ten years ago.  I was previously a driving instructor.  My business partner at the time had started dating his local pub landlady at a time when Margaret Thatcher, contrary to her pledge of "home ownership for the masses", had allowed interest rates to hit the bankrupting levels of over 15%.  I was one of those who bought into negative equity.  The business struggled, the car spluttered to the end of its career and my then-girlfriend left me with a mortgage that might as well have been a Third World debt.  I was desperate and in danger of losing everything I’d worked for.  My previous thirty years on planet earth was about to be deleted from some cosmic register if I didn’t act.  My ex-business partner and his now-wife were running a charming riverside pub in a country village where I would occasionally help out and even look after the place when they went on holiday.  I was beginning to think I might be reasonably good at the job when an advertisement in a newspaper proclaimed that an up-and-coming Freehouse Company was desperately seeking Trainee Pub Managers without encumbrances.  I was so unencumbered I was in danger of becoming clinically depressed at the thought and so I applied.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Refresh Your Writing By Leaving The Past In The Past

Refresh Your Writing By Leaving The Past In The Past

Creative Writing Course - 2nd week's homework.

The second week's class started with each of us reading out our homework assignment from the previous week.  I was a bit concerned that my offering might be deemed a little risque, particularly as I hadn't had much opportunity in the two hours the previous week to assess my classmates.  I needn't have worried.  Doug the Tutor had also undertaken the same exercise as he'd set us, and finished his with the dialogue 'Come on, let's fuck off.  The bus is waiting!'  It made my story about Dr Oral Love tame in comparison.  Thanks Doug. 


For our next assignment he sent us away with a line from a Brothers Grimm fairy story called 'The King of the Golden Mountain' and told us to continue from that line with another 200 - 500 words.  I've had an idea in my mind for some time that I will send my main character, Reece Winner, to other countries where his philanthropy might be desperately welcomed.  There are several places in the world that I have already visited, where I've hopefully gained sufficient knowledge with which to write some of these stories.  However, I have never been to the African continent further south than Egypt, and would love to embark on a trip to gather research for a Reece Winner story I already have in mind for there.  I was thus inspired to write this piece for this week's assignment.

The son took leave of his father, placed himself in a small boat and the father had to push it off with his own foot.  The water, turned silver by the moonlight, lapped at the bows like mercury, as the boat slid silently away.  Neither dared speak for fear of discovery, nor look in the other’s eyes in case a visible tear changed their decision.  Reece knew that his leaving the island was his father’s only chance of survival.  He needed to make it to the mainland before the bank opened for business on Monday and cancel the transfer to Okeke’s bank account.  They had both agreed that once he had the ransom, Okeke would have no reason to let them go free, or to cease his executions of the surviving hostages.

He paddled as quietly as he could with his hands, afraid to lower the oars into the water until he was sure the guards would not hear their splashes.  He watched his father slip away into the shadows and wondered if he would ever see him alive again.  The moon passed behind a cloud, cloaking the sea in blackness, offering Reece an opportunity to put distance between him and the island.  He installed the oars and silently lowered the blades into the near-motionless sea.  As he drew the oars powerfully into his chest, he felt the gratifying surge of the boat pulling away from the shore, taking him towards the safety of the mainland and away from his nightmare.  At the end of the stroke, he cautiously raised the blades high above the surface of the water, to avoid catching a crab.  He pushed the oars forward once more, holding his breath to eliminate even that sound, as the rowlocks creaked and rattled.  As he dipped the oars once more, he saw a tiny flame in the bushes as a guard lit a cigarette.  His heartbeat resonated as adrenalin and terror conspired to make him row for all he was worth and hope to get far enough away to evade recapture.  Then he remembered how Okeke’s men had chased poor Bandele, when he had tried to paddle his canoe for the mainland a few days earlier.  He could still hear the men’s laughter as they circled him in motor launches causing him to capsize and almost drown in their wakes, before Okeke himself, had put a bullet in his head and left him out in the Strait to the sharks.

The image of Bandele floating face down, his young life ebbing into the sea, stirred his hatred for Okeke and his desire to see him dead.  Staying calm, meant staying alive and clinging to the chance of personally seeing that happen.

Creative Writing Course - 1st week's homework.

Our tutor Doug, showed us a picture of a character from Venetian folklaw called The Medico della Peste (The Plague Doctor) and told us to write 200 to 500 words about whatever the image brought to mind.  Later that week, as I sat down with the intention of tackling the exercise, I got involved in Facebook chat with the daughter of an old colleague, about a doctor I stumbled across in the Medical Register when I worked in NHS administration.  His name really was as I've written and having been reminded about him I couldn't resist incorporating him into the piece.

He sat at the hotel dining table, nervously anticipating the entrance of his future mother-in-law.  His fiancée seemed to be watching the lift doors with all the trepidation that someone with a noose around their neck would watch the trapdoor.  His mother sighed and repeatedly glanced at her watch, in between tutting and rolling her eyes, as if the tardiness of their hostess was less forgivable than The Crucifixion itself.  His father, on the other hand, was calmly polishing his cutlery with all the smug, self-assuredness of someone about to be proven right, provoking Oral to fantasise about how he might use his skills as a doctor to commit the perfect patricide.

It annoyed him that at the age of twenty-nine, he was still intimidated by his father, despite having lost all respect for him on his first day at secondary school. That was when he had discovered that his name was to be a millstone around his neck for the rest of his life.  He remembered going home and asking his father why the older kids had called him names and his father had simply laughed and told him he would find out soon enough.  When eventually, one of the kinder, older girls had explained a few things to him, he had stormed home and asked how any sane parent, with the surname ‘Love’, could have decided it was a good idea to call their offspring, ‘Oral’.

Oral Love’s name had remained a curse until he left school to study medicine at Nottingham University.  The students there had been equally quick to seize the opportunities for humour that his name presented, but he soon became blasé of his new nickname Horatio.  Nonetheless, he would still feel hairs bristle whenever someone used the unexpurgated version of Horatio Fellatio.

                                                                       

He had only met his future mother-in-law on one previous occasion, and even his love for her daughter had not blinded him sufficiently to ignore that she had hit every branch as she fell from the ugly tree.  Now he was about to introduce her to his parents, and he knew that his father especially, would be eager to find something to criticise. 

When the lift’s bell rang, even Mrs Love deigned to look towards the silently opening doors.  Oral could almost hear his mother’s sharp intake of breath and his father’s stifled snigger as Mrs Cruickshank swept into the restaurant.  She was wearing a long, dark brown gown, which looked as though a hundred moles had died for its creation.  Her make-up gave her the pallor of a cadaver after his former anatomy class had finished with it, and served to exaggerate her misshapen features so she appeared even more unlovely than he remembered.  Her nose supported thick, frameless lenses, which aspired to magnify the hooked, beak-like monstrosity out of all proportion to the rest of her face.  She brandished the stick she carried more menacingly than the Medico della Peste himself, upon whom, he speculated, she had modelled her appearance.

A time to write.

When I decided to satisfy my desire to be a writer, I was just a few months into running a pub, which had been closed and boarded up for several years. 

It sat decaying and looking forlorn in a Lincolnshire market town when I stumbled upon it.  It was still an attractive building and seduced me into wanting to put my twenty years experience into saving its life.  I spent several Monday to Fridays away from my other pub in Nottingham, project managing the building work whilst doing much of the labouring and redecorating with a friend.  My wife, son and I eventually left our previous pub, and home of seven years, and moved in.  However, we could not have foreseen, when we reopened in July 2008, that fatcats within the banking system were greedily lining their pockets and creating unstable markets, which would eventually plunge the UK into a global recession.  Or so I was led to believe by the press - I was too busy swimming against the tide to worry about the mechanics of the problem.  The pressure was already well and truly on when we discovered my wife was pregnant some 4 months later.

It was about that time, during one of the bedtime story sessions with my eleven year-old son, I decided that I was running out of time to do something I always knew I would one day do.  Pub hours were long and seven days a week.  We worked until 3am on Fridays and Saturdays, chasing the late night drinkers and dealing with the antisocial crap they brought with them.  We had bills to pay and staff who relied on us for employment.   Takings were precariously low and overheads high.  I felt under a ton of pressure.  Yet I knew I would eventually have to find the time to realise my ambition and it might as well be now.  If the adage 'When you want something done, ask a busy man to do it' were true, then the timing was ideal!

I had read many Enid Blyton books as a child; The Famous Five, The Find Outers, The Ship,Valley, Mountain, River of Adventure etc and had revisited many of them through reading to my son in recent years.  I had noted how dated they seemed, and how the freedom enjoyed by kids in the fifties seemed unrealistic in today's 'nanny society'.  Even growing up in the sixties and seventies I used to envy these youngsters who went off on great adventures without parents to supervise them, and we had much more freedom then, than kids seem to enjoy today.  I decided I wanted to write stories that took a central character on adventures similar to the ones Enid Blyton wrote about, but in a modern, and therefore, harder hitting way.  I wanted to create something that would resonate with modern teens/young adults, but I didn't want to write fantasy.  I wanted the reader to truly empathise with the characters and recognise potential events in their own lives within the stories.  I adore travel and therefore wanted to take the main character, and the reader, all over the world - and that meant giving him the means to do it.  I also wanted to encourage readers to appreciate the English language, and whilst I acknowledge that there must be a degree of realism in the writing, I vowed to avoid the 'yoof-speak' and text language that afflicts this generation. Finally I decided that my main character had to be like a son I could be proud of, with sound morals, a sense of fairness and an innate concern for the plight of others.  As an atheist, I wanted to do this without any whiff of preaching. 

Reece Winner, is twelve years old and the story starts on the day his parents split up.  He lives in a pub overlooking the North Cornish coast.  His parents have bought it a few months earlier, after his father had spotted it for sale during a family holiday the previous year.  He's a slightly eccentric boy, with dyspraxia, which makes him awkward and hence prone to isolation and bullying.  Nonetheless, he is likeable and quite introvertly smart.  One of his coping mechanisms is to find humorous anagrams of the names of teachers or other antagonists.  Hence, his bullying enemy Robert Fathaby, becomes 'Fart-Breath Boy',  Rupert Poutril the PE teacher becomes 'Pupil Torturer' etc.  However, he is often afraid of telling anyone, for fear of being thought a 'geek'.

He suffers a series of unhappy events which turn his once-stable life upside-down, including falling into cliff blowhole in a quickly rising tide, whilst out researching a homework assignment.  His father, racing to help him, has an accident and suffers serious injuries which land him in intensive care.  He is helped through all this by his new friend Kara, an equally out-of-place girl, whose father committed suicide a few years earlier.  His parents' split, the pub being hit by recession, debt collectors calling at all times of the day and night, and his father's tragic accident, all threaten to throw Reece and his dad out on the street and force them to leave his beloved Cornwall - but I've haven't called him Reece Winner for nothing.

We recently sold our Lincolnshire pub and so had to find somewhere else to live.  I was so desperate to finish the first Reece Winner story, I persuaded my wife to move to Cornwall.  We now live in Polperro (which is on the opposite coast to where I set the book), but I have a stunning view from my lounge window over Polperro Harbour.  The weird thing is, I have written much less since moving here than I did before, when I had the pub to run.  When I set out creating Reece, I would drive my son to school at 8.30am and continue driving to a picnic area in Willingham Woods where I would sit outside in the freshness of the morning and get a couple of hundred or so words into my laptop.  There was a snack hut which opened at 9am and the owner gave me a discount on tea because I was there so often.  I would stay there until 10am when I would return to the pub to get ready for opening at noon.  Ironically, the writing seemed easier then than it does now.

Okay, so we do have a baby, now aged 15 months, and a teenager whose self-sufficiency is limited to not having to be reminded to breathe.  Our apartment has only one lounge/diner where I can sit and work and I often have to give that up because my daughter wants to sing along to The Teletubbies whilst discovering what happens when she presses the buttons on the TV, the stereo, my laptop or the telephones.  When I've removed all of these, or barricaded the side of the room where the TV sits,  she will steer her Scuttlebug (a wonderful sit-on device designed to allow children who cannot yet walk, access to every socket, hot coffee and drawer full of life threatening implements on the ground floor) towards the parrots cage and poke her fingers through the bars.  Cassie the Cockatoo, has so far been very good about this and only pecked her once, but I am afraid that as her obvious warning nip has failed to deter young Jasmine, Cassie might think the next one ought to remove the digit at the knuckle.

During the summer I have tried taking my laptop across the cliffs to sit in the sun and write.  Unfortunately, it's impossible to see a laptop screen in the intense sun that has blessed Cornwall this year.  During the tourist season, sitting in a cafe for a couple of hours sipping overpriced tea, is not going to put you on the owner's Christmas card list.  The shelters in town are full of people noisily enjoying their holiday and so writing outside the house has not been all that successful and I can't really afford to be driving to isolated locations.  I chide myself all the time that these are pathetic excuses for surmountable problems, and to a degree that is correct.  However, when I do find myself with the time and environment criteria met, that can be the time when I'm simply not in the mood.  Or that is when Facebook or Twitter will appear like the angels of Beelzebub and promise me writing fortune and fame if I just read this post or that blog, or make a cuttingly sarcastic witticism about an ex-customer's spelling of 'gawjus' and other such inanities.  

Then I have my writing class, which, because we live in Cornwall, is a 50 mile round trip every Wednesday night, returning home in the fog, which swirls off Bodmin Moor.  With homework!  Yes, bloody homework!  I have enough of that to do for my son.  My homework assignment this week is to write 200-500 words starting with 'The son took leave of his father, placed himself in a small boat and the father had to push it off with his own foot.'  If he's not careful, my son will be the one in the boat.  For real. 

I guess I'm hoping that chronicling my progress in this blog will be a cathartic excercise to download the mental detritus and leave my brain uncluttered for the creative task at hand.

I remember reading, many years ago, an interview in which an author, (whose name is lost to Alzheimer's) was asked if she enjoyed writing books.  She replied, 'I enjoy having written a book', and this sums it up for me.  What started out as an enjoyable distraction, has now become an obsession - and that's serious shit.  Reece Winner makes new daily demands for more effort, harder work, more research, more learning and more polishing to perfection.  And whilst I know that sounds like a complaint, it isn't.  It's the very least I should be prepared to do - but I'll be damned glad when I've finished!  It's presently at 54,000 words and I think it will probably finish at 70-80,000.  Any advice from fellow writers/readers is welcome.  Just don't interrupt me when I'm writing!