I sit in Las Vegas, the air conditioning making me shiver, typing away – backwards and forwards, type and delete – trying to write an introduction that I might actually take the time to read for a book of my words.
It seems funny to have such a book, with my words printed inside it, and it’s with no false modesty that I say I don’t really see myself as a writer – this writing stuff nothing to do with me. If I was to come up with a reason for this embarrassment of inadequacy it would be that writing has always been such a struggle, from the moment I started school, to now as I sit and shiver. There’s no way I can claim such a title as ‘writer’. To find something so difficult robs you of any feeling of mastery, mastery being a requirement for such a book as this, my ‘greatest hits’. And so instead of being a writer I see myself as being something else: part thief and part connector of discordant events, mining the past. Oh and last lines, I’m good at last lines.
First to the thievery.
The words in this book were most often not really freely given but taken, sometimes stolen against the wills of the characters described, from people who had no clue that my writer’s brain was casing away everything said and done and experienced. The more you can steal the better; the stuff people want left out is more often than not the only stuff to put in.
Having gone through so much past writing looking for the good stuff for this book, I would also add myself to the list of injured parties, my own life picked through for nuggets that could be forged into something of value to the reader – no thought to the crime in it. All that mattered was the words, even ones that did me harm.
There is also some criminal boldness needed to write stories that people want to read: a little raw, a bit edgy, car-crash uncomfortable – things that make people read through their fingers, things they’ve not quite read before, things they want to read but didn’t know it. I’m often asked if those who I’ve written about are still alive (yes, they are), or if others mind so honest a sharing (often not), or if I share too much (yes, I do). All that really matters is that the words are read, criminal or not. As I’ve said, I’m not a writer of skill, but a thief – have been so long before the words – and that urge to read what I write is often just the thrill of being in on the job.
As for connections, this really seems to be what I’m good at and has very little to do with the art of writing, of planning and structure and knowing your beginning, middle and end. I was once diagnosed as being extremely dyslexic, regarded as a problem at the time – an excuse. But I soon saw it as a gift, allowing me to deconstruct and rebuild complex things, a story nothing but a pattern of words and meanings that can be pulled apart. These stories I tell are very often confused and complex, going here and there, which some wrongly assume to be designed that way, that in the madness there is deeper meaning and intellect. There is not, I just start writing and see where my easily distracted brain takes me – oh look, a squirrel – but you’re welcome to extract a higher meaning if you wish. This distraction is also tied to my adventurous spirit, in that I don’t want certainty, to know what comes next, what lies around every corner, only the certainty that the next paragraph has the potential to be different to this one and unexpected.
Once upon a time and long enough ago to share and not face prosecution, I was more than a word thief.
My thievery did not involve diamonds, bars of gold, or fancy sports cars, but cheese. Maybe you can go to prison for such a crime, or be sent to hell, but in my defence, this was the cheapest of cheese m’lud, not the good stuff that stinks out your house. It was hardly cheese at all, more soft orange rubber, showing that at least back then I felt some shame. The wrapper of this ill-gotten gain was labelledHappy Shopper, Cheddar, strong, strong cheese the only one worth the risk of being caught for – after all, life is too short for mild.
Happy Shopper was a popular brand back then in the 1990s, each item like a little Red Cross parcel to the cash-strapped: single mums, men who lived alone, the elderly, the downtrodden, people spread as thin as can be on their small slice of life. And so such offerings were true to their word, bringing happiness to shoppers with an affordable bounty of cheap cuts and slices and measures, sold in corner shops and Asian supermarkets everywhere.
Back in those days my income was about twenty-four pounds a week – I was spread thin enough to
