I need to find a "moment" for anewspaper-column pitch, where my life changed. That’s the way the gig works yousee. It’s called the moment that changed my life. My publisher, the brilliant 'Fly on the Wall Press' are keen for me to pitch a script and we'll figure out a way to tie it into the launch in February of 'The Wager and the Bear.' It's a great idea, but this is a toughcall for a writer. Writers aren’t meant to have interesting lives. We are supposedto be slaves to our desks, hunched forever over our typewriters (OK … keyboards),gazing wistfully at a world beyond our windows. We don’t have adventures of ourown. We are expected to invent them. That way, everyone can enjoy them.

Of course this hasn’t always beentrue. Literary history is strewn with hard-drinking, swash-buckling,law-breaking, jail-bird adventurers who somehow managed to find time to put pento paper.  Hemmingway had a remarkably eventfullife if you remember. I’ve seen the spot on the Nile River where he and MaryWelsh crashed their little Cessna plane and had to camp on the crocodile-infestedriverbank. These days, guides on the Murchison-Falls tour-boats helpfully pointthe location out for you. There are still plenty of crocodiles, but thejeopardy is not quite the same. The day after the accident the Hemmingwayscrashed a second plane, and the great writer escaped only by smashing throughthe window with his head. Now that was a significant day. Kurt Vonnegutwas captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge, and he survived thefire-bombing of Dresden by hiding in a meat locker. Günter Grass served in theWaffen-SS and got taken prisoner by the Americans. George Orwell fought in theSpanish civil war where he got shot in the throat by a sniper. It is difficultto imagine these writers producing their masterpieces without these life changingexperiences.

I’m just not sure I can match anyof these. I once spent a night in a French prison (don’t ask)  but it hardly compares with John Bunyan who wasimprisoned for twelve years for preaching without a license, or Dostoevsky’s fourgruelling years in a Siberian prison camp for meeting in a bar with otherintellectuals to discuss utopian socialism. You have to hope the beer was good.Primo Levi survived a year in Auschwitz. Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in the Gulagfor criticizing Stalin. Henri Charrière got sent to a brutal penal colony inFrench Guiana in 1931. He escaped and wrote ‘Papillion.’  

I’m not sure whether to pity orenvy the experience of these writers. They certainly knew how to turn theirtribulations into good stories. And when writers couldn’t find time for adventure,they could often claim a tough childhood. Dickens had to leave school at theage of twelve to work in a boot-polish factory because his father was in adebtor’s prison. Mark Twain also had to finish school at twelve. He went off tobe a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi. That must have been eventful. MayaAngelou was abused by her mother's boyfriend at the age of seven and she didn’tspeak for almost five years. James Joyce grew up in poverty. So did Edgar AllenPoe. So did Frank McCourt. And Tennessee Williams. And Rousseau. And Robert Burns.And Orwell. And Jack London. And D.H.Lawrence. JK Rowling faced hardship as asingle mother living on the breadline. Sylvia Plath battled depression. VirginiaWoolf struggled with her mental health. It makes you wonder if fortitude and atalent with words go hand in hand.   

I can’t really claim a life-changingday like any of these writers. I can’t boast a difficult upbringing and I’venever had to buckle a load of swash. I once saw a Javan rhino. That’s a rarething. I had a holiday job counting elephants in Tsavo. I met Idi Amin in a barand he bought me a drink. I drove across the Sahara in a Renault 5. I playedLaertes in a school production of Hamlet. I was part of a team that broke theworld record for speed-reading Shakespeare. But somehow, I don’t think any ofthese things will feature in my obituary. None of them changed my life. Notreally.

So I’m going to have to keep onthinking. If I ever get the gig I shall post it here and you’ll be able to readall about the moment that changed my life.