I WAS on a writing retreat. Well, I was staying in Cornwall with my then girlfriend and had taken my typewriter.
My career was on an upward trajectory as I had seen deserved success with a short story published in a collection of top Yorkshire writers. Oh yes, I was on my way. Undoubtedly, I would soon be drinking in the Groucho Club.
Mirrors of Apathy was, in my humble opinion, the best piece of work in the book. A story of venom, vitriol, bitterness, anger and the general wasteland that is life, it deserved more than the space it currently occupied in the middle pages of this shabby compilation of mediocrity...
“I’ll turn it into a novel,” I thought.
Cottage hired, typewriter and booze packed, off we pretentiously went.
A story in the local paper about my masterpiece, accompanied by an arty picture of me looking suitably downtrodden as I leaned against the wall of a subway, had inspired protest from a couple of moaners, one being my uncle.
It was about the murder of a trainspotter and he was/is a trainspotter, so...
The expansion into a novel would see the character’s mood plummet as the world around him descended into madness and corruption, with people’s reactions being nothing more than to turn to drink, drugs and, yes, trainspotting.
My days in the cottage would involve a couple of cups of tea, some brief exercise to awaken the mind, a spot of writing, an energising stroll, thinking time and plenty of alcohol.
Prior to our sojourn, we had thumbed through The Writers and Artists’ Yearbook 1994. I had posted some poetry to Bloodaxe and was just waiting for the right offer to come back. I was also trying to learn to play the guitar and write lyrics for a non-existent band that I would have been the singer in due to being the thinnest.
I did have dreams though and soon Salvation Army Strumming (my story’s new title) was taking shape. I had crafted around 50 sides of A4 on a word processor bought from a vicar and was feeling pretty chuffed with myself, those.
I nodded to on my coastal walks clearly recognising that I wasn’t one of them, just there for some fresh air and an ice cream. No, I was going places. Another pub in Looe, mostly.
At the end of the week, we read each other’s work. She had produced a short story called The Hen House. I still have a copy, it’s very good. She will not have kept my work.
“Yeah, yeah, yah, it’s not bad,” I said, thinking “damn, that’s better than what I’ve done”. “You could perhaps introduce a little more jeopardy, some causality perhaps, but it’s a good start...”
“You’ve definitely, er, really captured the zeitgeist,” she said, as if I’d lassoed a rare wild animal.
I’m not sure I knew what zeitgeist meant. Also, little did I know then that Irvine Welsh had written a novel called Trainspotting that was about to be made into a film and had hunted down said zeitgeist in a more articulately zeitgeisty way than I had.
In reality I was no good at any of the things I aspired to be; the poetry, the songwriting.
I didn’t put the effort in and was perhaps 30 years ahead of my time now we are living in an era of the simplistic mantra “dream it. be it”, usually uttered by one of the 0.0007 per cent of people who did and are.
I was, however, confident that now I’d taken a week off to write I would not have to endure the trials and tribulations of work for much longer - I was correct on that count as I was made redundant shortly afterwards.
Since then, the other writer in that cottage has had two books published and penned a play, and well, it might be 3-0 but there’s hopefully plenty of time to be added on before the game’s over.
Actually, I’ve just looked up the prices of coastal cottages in Cornwall. Blow the whistle. Full-time.