James Forrest's Blog

Fragments

"Hey world ... Here I am ..."

Shit, I always loved that song. I always wanted to use it for something like this!

Yep, to those who know me, the days of lazy introspection are over. Things have changed. I've changed. Is that good, or bad? Time will tell ...

I've been writing for years now. Sometimes it's felt like banging my head against the wall. At other times, it's been like trying to push a huge stone up a hill. I spent the last two years working in magazines, some of it writing about things I could have cared less about, but not much less ...

At other times, the rush was so good I felt like Mr Mike, from my first story, Dead Dark, cruising on good grade coke.

Yet, through all of it, I wasn't writing what I wanted to write. Fiction got put on the back burner. Ideas which had been gestating nicely found themselves in cold storage, like a virus in a deep freeze.

Now they're out there. Whether they spread or not depends on how well I've done my work in the lab. I am under no illusions about having created a superbug ... but I hope it catches, spreads, gets into the population ...

Excuse the virus analogies. I've had them on my mind lately, because the novel I'm working on right now is about a bioterrorism attack on Glasgow ... it's getting to the part where I can reorder the landscape of my city somewhat ... I'm having a lot of fun with it.

Does that make me a bad person? I've already killed my brother in law, horribly ... but in my defence, I offered him the death of his choice, and he wanted it this way ...

So here I am, with the lock-pick and the circuit board, trying to break into the wonderful world of self publishing. I am loving it so far. The actual act of sitting here, writing this blog, is tremendous fun.

It won't always be like this. Some of it is going to be a slog. I'm in no doubt about that. There will be frustrations along the way ... but no regrets, I suspect.

This is what I've always wanted to do. Am I any good at it? The readers will decide that. I've never known. There are things I've written which I've honestly loved, and found out I'm the only one who did. And I've written things which I thought were well below par ... and found there's a hook in there I couldn't see ...

There's a story about William Goldman, the great screenwriter. He once wrote a play about the love of red wine, and he went to see it performed on the opening night. The audience, and the critics, loathed it. He described it as the worst moment of his life ... and every one of us who ever picked up a pen, or tapped the keys on the wordprocessor invariably imagines the same ...

Yet, as Orwell says, we still do it. Forget about money, about fame, about status. If that's what I was writing for I'd have given up the ghost years ago, because twenty years after first deciding I wanted to write I ain't got any of that yet. If that's what drives you as a writer the things you need, the things which matter most, are no longer there.

In the end, Goldman loved his play, although the rest of the world didn't. He was embarrassed by the reaction ... but not by what he'd created. The audience didn't get it ... no-one did. But then, he didn't write it for them in the first place ...

I don't do it for the above stated reasons. Money, fame, status. They'd be nice things to have, but if they're not at the end of the line it doesn't matter. This is about the journey, not the destination.

I'll be blunt, and I'll be honest, dear friends, although I love the thrill of making you squirm, or squeal, or jump, although it's nice to know someone enjoys your work ... I don't do it for YOU either ...

I do it for me. As all writers do. And in the end, we are selfish. It's the reason people complain when the author kill their favourite character. It's the reason the critics steam up when they point out the writers failings and the writer carries on regardless, charting his or her own course.

JK Rowling was rejected over 20 times, by publishers who "knew better" what people wanted to read. But she didn't do it for the publishers any more than she did it for the fans. JK, and King, and Harris and the others did it for themselves.

We all do. And we would do it if no-one at all read our work. We would do it if it made people angry enough that they sent us nasty messages in the post. (Some of my football blogs have garnered exactly that reaction!) We would keep on doing it if they made it illegal (shit, they're making everything else illegal). Instead of chatting on messageboards we would meet in the basements of disused libraries and write our stories on that crinkly paper they used to make the bog roll you got in schools out of ...

In the end, we're all a little bit crazy ... we're all living on the nightline.

So yes, here I am. Breaking in. Or trying to. And I'm not really here for the pot of gold that may or may not be in a safe on the third floor ... I'm here for the same reason the rest of you are ... for the buzz, for the thrill, for the love of the game.

I'm here for the Story.

In the end, that's all there is.