Resolution 26
Well, it is still just about that time of year
I have three creative writing projects on the go, all of which I will complete this year. I have made similar vows in previous Januarys - more of them than I like to think about. The difference this time is that I’m vowing in public. High stakes. Imagine if, bit by bit, later in 2026, I honour the pledge I’m rashly making here and get to wildly exult about it. Imagine, if you prefer, my disappointment if no one cares.
Those are just some of the possibilities thrown up by my risk-ridden strategy, and many more may be realised as the months unfold, including me simply giving up and looking back on these few words with shame, dismay and a lurking urge to furtively erase them. For now, though, let me metaphorically show you my orderly notebooks and newly-sharpened pencils and describe each of the three projects in brief.
One of them is another novel - a follow-up to Frightgeist, though very different in subject matter and tone. This one will concern three young people, each an outsider in different ways, trying to find their grown-up feet in an unglamorous part of Greater London. History, fashion, music and suburban shopping streets will be bedrock themes, as will friendship, fibbing and not fitting in, sometimes all at the same time.
I intend it to be 50,000 words long. If we’re being posh, we might say it’s going to be at the fat end of the novella range. Whatever, I’ve been picking up, putting down, warming to and going off this bit of work for far too long. The shorter it’s going to be, the greater is the chance of me at long last finishing the thing. Such is the way we Great Artists think.
The second project is a novel too, and also intended to weigh in at 50,000 words. That’s the beginning and end of any similarity. One of the larger differences is that I’ve been starting, stopping, tearing up and sticking back together this particular work of fanciful imagination for at least twice as long. Another, is that it is a story for children, probably aged between roughly eight and ten.
It will, naturally, have lots of London in it too, but it is also set elsewhere - a place called Outer Space. At this point in its gestation it has a large cast of characters (perhaps too large) including several zany robots (perhaps too many) and an evolving allegorical layer (perhaps overdone). I’ve already got unwieldy drafts of this Great Unfinished Opus that run to 30,000 words, so a large part of my task is deciding which of those words are rubbish, which aren’t and then plotting a path to the finish line.
The third and final project is the one I am the most weedily insecure about. For that reason, I’m not going to reveal anything about it until I’m absolutely sure it is going to get done. I trust this shock disclosure hasn’t ruined your day.
More news on all of the above as and when I have some to report. In the meantime, I’m still engaged by William Boyd’s London-set novel Armadillo (page 263 out of 374) and still enjoying spotting clues about how things have changed since its publication in 1998. I’ve already mentioned how very much pre-smoking ban it is. Here’s another passage that might need to be written differently today:
“He drove straight up Holland Park Avenue through Notting Hill Gate and the Bayswater Road to Marble Arch, then down Park Lane, Constitution Hill, left at Westminster Bridge and on to Victoria Embankment. Lorimer could not explain why he decided to turn off the Embankment, but the idea came to him suddenly and he decided to follow it at once.”
No Congestion Charge? No bike lanes? Not yet.