The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

I decided that I wanted to be a writer at an early age. I don't really remember at what age that the desire gripped me, it's something that I've always wanted to do. I have never craved being published, the knowledge that I have completed a book is quite enough. The enormous sensation of success when I do it is what drives me to continue. At least the sensation that I hope I have.

However, I do remember quite clearly the realisation that being a writer actually required me to write. I was fourteen, (I think), years old and it dawned on me that I would probably need some practice before I started to be a bad writer. I'm a firm believer that the default position for starting to learn a new skill is 'scrote'.

So write I did and it was probably very bad. Bad enough for me to realise that it was bad whilst still in the scrote position. I think that that doesn't class it as probably very bad but as very bad.

Nevertheless, it was the first step and I realised that I wanted to be a writer simply because I enjoyed the puzzle of finding the right words to match the picture in my head and not have it be bad writing. I really like the actual process of writing so I decided to write a really long book.

That book is the book I am writing now despite it's many iterations and my occasional desires to burn the damn thing. It is the seemingly endless grind of word by word, chapter by chapter that seems interminable. Yet it is with the first step that I took all those years ago that I started and all the thousands of intervening steps that have been taken and that are yet to be taken, that the journey will be completed.

And so now I wonder, is it the desire of my destination that forces me on, or is it the journey itself.

After all, it's a really, really big book.

DR

The Hydra Story

Well, the truth of the matter is that I'm meant to be writing. I am, I'm writing this blog, I know. What I mean is that I should be writing a chapter. I wish I were but sometimes the hydra rears its many heads and prevents me from doing so. In a previous chapter I mentioned a number of street gangs and they are the hydra of my day. I want to refer to them again in a little more detail but I can't, I can't remember their names. I don't want to have a lot of blank spaces in my text is the first thing. The second thing is that I have a visual memory. If I can't see a thing, it's difficult to write about it. In order to see such a thing in my mind's eye, it needs to have a name do that it can be recalled. They do have a name and thus, when I discover what I named them, will be able to write about them.

They are a hydra because the problems of internal consistency are such that whenever you think you've solved a problem you actually find that you've created two more. The only way to resolve them is to take the problem and burn it all the way back to the mechanics of your universe. Sometimes this creates enormous problems that involve scrubbing out large portions of prose, plot points or indeed entire characters. It must be done.

I first tried to write this book at the age of fourteen. I still, somewhere, retain the first few pages that I wrote. I weep with disdain at my feeble efforts. Nevertheless, it contains a few seeds of the book now. I discovered fairly quickly that my universe was entirely inadequate and that everything I had written was suitable only for lighting fires. The second attempt went the same way. As did all other attempts three through forty-seven.

Yet each one has led me, inexorably, to the hydra that I have today. A many headed beast that needs constant fighting, each of the heads burning all the way down to the body of the underlying universe.

Ultimately, this is a battle I'm now winning. Many, many words have been written and it all stays strong. I will find those gangs, burn them down and keep going.

I'm rambling.

DR