To Be Blunt…

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I’m having an odd time of it, due to a saga of intended violence a few years back I am transformed. A layer of myself was stripped away from me, I didn’t notice at first, nobody does really. But a funny thing happened that made quite the revelation, not all phobias are straightforwardly arachnid. Mine was the telephone – Yes, it’s real – It came about in a horrendous work experience in my teens, even before that I hated it! Hated making queries, hated talking to friends as I was no Joey Potter.

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Anyhoo this wretched, knee-capping phobia disappeared overnight! I’m as awestruck as I am baffled, takeout, bank queries, they’re all a piece of cake now!! But a frequent downside occurs – I have become stupendously blunt, I was making a recruitment query and I told them in no uncertain terms that I couldn’t deliver what they needed, no fluff, no meandering just…Ipso facto -I have yet to get a reply from them!

BUT…WHAT IF IT AFFECTS THE WRITING??

My thousand-Odd year old hometown is both the cradle of industry and cynicism. It’s quite amusing how cynical Londoners are, that has turned up a notch too and I fear it may influence my writing eventually. God forbid I become so cynical as to invent a Becky Sharp or Tess Durbeyfield. Is there a beauty to both? Yes. Does reality knock you for six in the end? Of course it does!

Scribes must maintain the balance and bet how far down the rabbit hole the reader will follow you. Frankenstein is a warning against Man’s vanity, Dracula has the most surprising allegories. The Chronicles of Narnia is consumed with a man’s Faith before being destroyed by a man’s grief.

Writers must always ask that question, how far is too far? When our reality goes so very wrong it can act as a spilled ink well, blotting our most precious plans to escape it. We must maintain this balance and watch the wall between the world we have and the world we build to cope with it, otherwise they’ll be no point in writing them at all

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