Behind the Words.

One of the biggest drawbacks to being a writer, is there is this expectation that all writers should court the public to gain more readers, and therefore sales. In an age of public profiles on the internet, and socially sharing the contents of your lunch on Twitter, writers are expected to list every detail of their life, along with endless photos of themselves, with the aim of showing everyone on the planet how swell you are, so people will immediately run out and buy your books.

Every help blog and writers aide is the same, sell, sell, sell yourself or you will never make it as a writer. There appears to be this unwritten rule that the public must see and love a writer, before they are able to understand the stories they like, otherwise how could they ever read your books? If like me you are 80% introvert and just 20% extravert, and a quiet isolated life is your choice, then the thought of any of this instils very deep terrors indeed.

I have been published for a little over five years, I have been writing for most of my adult life, and if I am very honest, I had no intentions whatsoever of publishing Heirs to the Kingdom, I was if anything pushed. You see the thing here is very simply in a nut shell, I am not being rude, but, I don’t want you to know me, I don’t want you to know every detail of my personal life, I have zero intentions of showing the world my life, family or how I choose to live. I hate being photographed, and would rather be alone in the woodland than at the heart of a press conference or in huge crowds. The whole point of writing is that very fact, I write fantasy, not my life, and yet I am constantly pushed to sell my life so it will sell my books.

Call me old fashioned, or introverted, but isn’t the whole point of a book the words? I love John Wyndham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Tolkien and H.G. Wells, never met any of them as they largely lived before my time. I have read a great deal about their lives in their autobiographies, but that was only years after reading and loving the books that they wrote. Their stories sold me at the time of reading, I did not care who they were, it was their words on paper that exploded my imagination and sent me to the library or bookstore to find yet more of their books, and to be honest, I still think that is how it should be.

I like my comfort zone, and to be honest you should too, because if you take me out of it, I simply cannot write. Writing can be intense, I sit alone away from everything, I put on my head phones and play inspiring music, I am surrounded by files that hold the results of my research, which also includes pages filled with pictures of places, clothing, weapons and fantasy art, and I drink endless cups of coffee as I sit with a cigarette (that is usually unlit as I forgot to light it) hanging from my lip, as I reach that zone that allows everything to flow from my mind into the words on the page. It is mentally exhausting and exhilarating at the same time, and the world ceases to exist until I have finished the chapter or piece I am working on. There are times when it takes just an hour, and others where it takes almost all of the day, but the result is the start of what will appear in the next book.

I can tell you now; there is nothing within that process I want to share with the rest of the world. I am scruffy and relaxed, usually unshaven; I have even written naked on hot days, (Honestly you don’t want that picture believe me). I laugh as I make up the funnier sections and feel the tears in my eyes as I rip at my emotions to get those special moments just perfect. I talk to the characters as if they were present, as I try to work out if the conversations are flowing right, and too be quite honest, if you were walk in and film it, most of the world would think I was insane. The one thing I know without any doubt at all is that those moments are private and should remain so.

Ok I get that it is me, I understand that as the writer I impart a lot of myself into the story, after all it is my brain, my imagination and partly my view of the world, but it is also not me, and this is where knowing me is a pointless exercise. To explain it a little simpler, I pretend, yup you got it, I actually try and wear the shoes of another and make them do things I could never do. I do not hunt, actually I am a vegetarian, and have been for 25 years. I do love trees, but I have never killed anyone, (I am actually quite happy about that) and I never would, Mason Knox is very capable, and yes I wrote him, but that does not mean any aspect of him is me.

The words together free from any ideas of who the writer is, allow the reader to judge the story completely free of any bias, and that is the whole point of writing, it is and should be to a certain extent an anonymous act. Modern social networking has decayed one of the most important boundaries of any writer, as it has asked all of us to remove our privacy and reveal everything about who we are, but sadly knowing the writer will not enhance your experience of the book, if anything it will cloud it. Take my word for it, find a book by a writer who you know nothing about and sit quietly and ingest their words, once you have taken the words inside yourself, then let your imagination fly and paint the pictures chapter by chapter, and you will experience reading at its best, because that is the only way we should ever read a book. Who wrote it should be the last thing you think about it, and as to what their eye colour is or what pants they wear on the train, should never be anything other than the Author’s concern.

Sadly the world has taken a shift over the last few decades and we have become preoccupied with Celebrities, a whole industry has grown up around them, and it appears that writers are being dragged screaming into the mix, but the reality of it from a writers point of view, is that we would much prefer not to be. I understand there are those individuals who court the cameras and enjoy the exposure they get, but they are actually a very small number. The world has rolled into 24 hour news, and we have reached a point where media has become the only sales tool of anything creative, and it is a sad fact of modern reality that digging into the private life of any individual appears to be the way books, movies, art and music is sold today. Gone are the days where a news report would project a picture of the author or the book in the background screen, it has to be a live interview that is the feature of the moment, and sadly for the very many introverted and creative people who write, that is more than a little bit uncomfortable.

I use social networks, I have a few accounts across the many, none of them really feature me, I try to focus on just the stories. I do give opinions from the point of view as the one who wrote the books, I also provide insights and alternative theories as to why maybe the stories twist and turn as they do. I love to talk about the characters and what they like, and will do so for as long as people ask, just don’t ask me to tweet my lunch menu, sadly I am incapable of doing so.

It may sound odd, but the only reason I ever published HTTK was simply because I was asked to. It took a great deal on my part to share the story with those very few early readers, writing is a deeply private part of the person I am, and writing comes from the quiet isolated part of my life, it is from my comfort zone. I do not deny I can step out when required to meet and talk with people about the stories I write, but for me that takes a lot of effort and is emotionally draining, I am by nature reclusive, only feeling at ease around small well known individuals, and it is because of these very facts, that I am able to pour emotion into what I write and connect with the readers using words. I know a few creative people, and we all agree that being isolated is the place where our creation comes from, sadly the roar and turmoil of the crowd is not a very creative space to be in, something I am sure my wife who is my only witness during writing can testify to.

I often bring to mind an interview I read with Dan Brown which came out after he had published the Davinci Code, which had become a huge success. He actually told the press that actually his life was very normal and boring, and he had no plans at all to change it. I remember reading it as if a light had flashed inspiration before me, as I completely understood him. It was a wonderful moment of clarity, as he was an A list selling author who admitted he did not want the press intrusion, he did not want to tour the endless streams of press and TV interviews, all he wanted to do was stay at home with his family in his quiet rural home and write, everything else was just another distraction that prevented him writing.

To conclude, I think, I can safely say I am a writer. I write every day, some days it flows, and on others it staggers just a little, but it is a process that I am unable to switch off. I write my books, and endless amounts of short posts that I either blog, or store up on file for later use. I have a Facebook Page, and anyone can message it to ask me something, so in that respect I am always available. There are few days when I am not sat staring into space, putting together the pictures I see in my mind with the right words, and I feel it is very important to do the best I can to make the things I write as interesting as possible. In between those moments of creation (Which I do not control) I do everything else, including update social media and plan other things I feel may be of interest to those who read what I write. The more time I spend talking in the media, the less I write, and I am driven by some inner compulsion to write, so that tends to win over the day.

It makes me happy, and having spent 30 years outdoors in all weathers working in horticulture, I find being warm and dry surrounded by my family, who are a huge part of who I am suits me more and more as I get older. I am dedicated to writing the best story I possibly can, because that is what I feel the reader expects, and knowing out there in the huge world are people who have smiled, or shed a tear having read my words matters a great deal, it matters not if I have ever met them, it is simply wonderful just knowing I helped make their day a little bit better. No amount of media or press will ever change that, because that moment when I write that small piece which warms your day, is far greater than anything else I could ever do in front of a camera, and that for me is what writing is really all about.