00:14:19.120now when when you say properly look at the amount of gatekeeping that book is then going to have to
00:14:25.780go through you can't you can't go to a publisher now well you can go to very small publishers
00:14:30.660but they're not going to help you they're going to want you to have already done the work and
00:14:34.840have a big social media presence a footprint and all of that sort of thing which you have
00:14:39.240but they're going to earn off of your the work you've done building up that uh that cultural
00:14:46.480footprint but so you're gonna have to go for an agent and then and i if an agent gets you a
00:14:52.320publisher that publisher's then going to get you a line editor a copy editor a developmental editor
00:14:59.560in my i see that then as a collaboration and the idea of all those crazy editors i mean a
00:15:08.420proofreader is different a proofreader is correcting mistakes you've made they're making
00:15:13.760write things you intended to write so if the puncture right you you put a single quote instead
00:15:19.660of a double quote for some dialogue or whatever that's what a proofreader does but all those other
00:15:25.300editors they are make they are they are kicking your manuscript into shape to make it more likely
00:15:34.500to sell they've got very little interest if any in literature in your story in the way you want0.68
00:15:42.200to tell it that and i understand that i'm not an idiot it's a business but the big five
00:15:48.600your random houses uh penguin etc who own most of the other ones people think that like hatchet
00:15:55.860and all that uh well hatchet's one big five i guess but it's a multi-user a multi-writer
00:16:05.400a collaboration and that worries me yeah that worries me yeah i don't want this is where
00:16:10.840well if you tried publish you're gonna get that yeah now jk rowling she doesn't have to
00:16:17.720they tell her she tells them what's happening because she's gonna sell millions of books
00:16:23.120that's gonna happen do you know what it makes me think of chris sorry sorry to interrupt you know
00:16:27.920what it makes me think of where i have tried to get a literary agent in the past they're like wait
00:16:32.000you're a younger white back then I was younger you're a younger white dude you're talking about
00:16:35.880base things you're talking about historical fiction where the white man wins and stuff like
00:16:39.300that yeah no thanks pass not in a million years not even close barely even let one line letters
00:16:44.560saying no thank you do you know what it reminds me of where you're talking about all those different
00:16:47.680editors well there's a film called Reds and a really early 80s film called Reds with Warren
00:16:54.200Beattie and it's about the American playwright and journalist John Reed who was one of those
00:17:01.800guys that was actually an american that was the 1917 russian revolution and wrote about it he was
00:17:07.720friends with um a number of other famous famous writers at the time anyway there's a just there's
00:17:13.760one bit in that film where he's a journalist and he sends in his copy and the editors or the editor
00:17:20.400and other people have twiddled around and fiddled around with what he's written and he just says
00:17:26.180now you don't write you don't rewrite what i write now you don't do it otherwise it's all
00:17:31.480over forget it i'm not doing anything now you don't rewrite what i write that's it end of story
00:17:35.700not one word that's how i feel about my writing that's how i feel about my writing no no i put
00:17:42.400blood sweat and tears into that and now if i've let you see it and let you read it it is perfect
00:17:47.520no you're not changing it and so and so probably i probably won't get all that far with one of the
00:17:53.660big publishing houses because no you're not going to rewrite it you can take it or leave it you're
00:17:57.860probably going to leave it but take it or leave it that's what I wrote that's it I mean am I mad
00:18:02.720you you tell that to an agent not even the publisher tell that to an agent and they'll
00:18:09.660just say yeah shut the door on the way out and don't come back yeah probably but that's why I
00:18:17.140self-publish but I don't self-publish I'm published by Ugly Mink Ugly Mink is a publishing
00:18:22.980it's an imprint of ugly mink i just so happen to own ugly mink well okay yeah it's a nice way of
00:18:31.640doing it but i mean look at this you're looking at about uh after uh production costs about 70
00:18:38.40060 something like that royalty if you self-publish on amazon you you go traditional publishing with
00:18:48.140With the cultural footprint you've spent years building from your History Bro channel, from the lower seat, from other things you've done, it's about 7.5% of the after-production cost royalty.
00:19:01.480so let's say the book is let's say it's a tenner um production costs probably about five because
00:19:09.120i've got to pay that line editor copy editor proofreader developmental editor uh a publicist
00:19:14.840marketing team uh dinners with all their friends who work at the guardian the telegraph for all
00:19:20.600the reviews and all the all the nepotism that exists in that hideous industry and so the
00:19:25.260production cost of your book you're now looking at seven percent of about three quid so 21 pence
00:19:32.500per book sale you want to make a living i'm a full-time professional writer i can't
00:27:26.180success oh we got married and we had a family and everyone lived happily ever after but before that
00:27:34.300and and we used to read these to our children our four and our five and our six-year-olds
00:27:39.600stories where people do chop off people's heads people people get killed people get drowned
00:27:45.880that all these all these you know western culture has lost adequate rituals especially for men
00:27:55.360but it does include women for growth and change especially around like puberty look at other
00:28:03.180cultures look at look at the jewish culture look what they do around puberty when a boy turns to
00:28:08.100a man there's a celebration there's a ritual that's been repeated for a long time and that0.94
00:28:14.760repetition has value where are the the children get read fairy tales these days where have all
00:28:22.160those great writers and those great books gone no they don't know them literally and I know it's
00:28:27.960a very overused word but literally the Teletubbies about 20 years ago I guess that was replaced
00:28:37.380the very rich European fairy tale tradition that had been going on orally for centuries
00:28:45.820and then got written down and was repeated there's now some woman I'm really glad I can't remember
00:28:51.400her name but she does a show on youtube and everyone i know who's got young kids love it
00:28:57.500and she's there and it's like i'm not the sun but i love the sun everyone loves the sun for like an
00:29:08.160hour and that's what children are being brought up on now we were being brought up on revenge
00:29:15.100murder death treachery vindication vengeance we were we literally were that's all gone
00:29:22.360what a what a dramatic change and when and when we go we go back to the gatekeeping of traditional
00:29:31.640publishing all that gatekeeping you have to go through where they kick your your work into shape
00:29:37.600change it turn it into a different story that goes here that goes here no we can't say that
00:29:42.240oh no oh no that's too real no oh that's vulgar all that gets changed then big money big power
00:29:49.660gets control of our cultural narrative and once you get control of the cultural narrative
00:29:56.240you get control of the historical narrative and that's why independent writers and independent
00:30:03.120publishers and storytelling is so important like it's not just it's not it's not just books it's
00:30:13.980not just tales it's it's a fundamental organizing an operative principle of western civilization
00:30:24.160that has been taken from it in a matter of decades no i'd agree with uh loads of things
00:30:30.200you said there i mean i think one of the things that separates us from the beasts one of the
00:30:35.880things that separates man from animals is speech obviously cognitive ability and storytelling
00:30:42.780culture if you like storytelling that's what all culture is i suppose in the end boils down to
00:30:49.420storytelling i can't remember where i read it was a great quote from somewhere or somewhere other
00:30:53.880can't remember what it was maybe a dan simmons book or an ian banks because said god would have
00:30:59.600destroyed men long ago but he just loved the stories so much that men that men dreamed up
00:31:05.500yeah i love it yeah it does set us apart um i mean what i do for epochs my history theme show
00:31:10.620pie in the paywall and i see this.com what that really is is an exercise in storytelling each
00:31:16.320one's a long-form bit of content about history and it's not writing prose like a novel but each
00:31:21.880one i try and have i do try and tell a story a beginning middle and an end with some sort of
00:31:27.340narrative stream and sometimes they're a little bit more complicated than others with various
00:31:31.420streams and cutting back but usually it's pretty linear pretty straightforward chronological
00:31:35.400storytelling nonetheless an exercise in in storytelling and like anything else you get
00:31:40.000better the more you do it with like almost anything the more you do it the better you're
00:31:43.480going to get at it and um i just find it i find it fun like i really do find it fun and this this
00:31:52.600novel i'm working i've been working on for a long time it's like it's even though it's i find
00:31:57.320difficult and I described it as sort of a weight on my shoulders and it's like it's like it's real
00:32:01.260work like it's real work but it's a labor of love also though absolutely a labor of love it's
00:32:06.420something to be proud of afterwards when you said you sit down or sometimes you sit down do seven
00:32:10.980hours a day or whatever I just it sounds like it sounds really weak if you get someone actually
00:32:16.440works in the fields you get someone that carries a hod of bricks around on their back all day
00:32:20.860you get someone that properly grafts with their hands all day long you get someone like me a
00:32:25.300soft-handed college boy sitting there saying oh it's really difficult to sit there and write for
00:32:31.900hours on end I tell you though psychologically mentally it is draining it's really honestly for
00:32:37.980me anyway it's really really draining to sit there for more than a couple of hours at a pop
00:32:42.900without a break and just and just sort of beat the way I do it beat myself up a little bit about
00:32:49.340no that's not good enough that's not right that's not what I meant that's not what I want to say
00:32:51.660i want to and just just you know really work it's real work at least psychologically at least
00:32:57.640mentally real real work but um to get back to what you're saying about storytelling i think
00:33:01.840is on a very very interesting thread there about children about fairy tales that yeah i was brought
00:33:07.640up a lot with um things like hang christian anderson loads of things in the western tradition
00:33:11.800things like the just so stories kipling things like a roll dial lots of roll dial stories are
00:33:17.960really violent and horrible little kiddies get disappear and get murdered people get their heads
00:33:22.200locked off i remember when i was a kid loads of little kids they love that if you talk about
00:33:26.440history they're like well how did he die then you know they love little kids usually quite they0.98
00:33:32.300they like they've got toilet humor they love things about piss and shit and people getting killed and0.98
00:33:36.400blood and heads flying kids love that you know usually yeah because that's their world their0.99
00:33:42.580world is that they're worried about their parents dying they they realize they're a child they go
00:33:49.000for a phase it's psychoanalytically known as well in certain fields of psychoanalytics um the mirror
00:33:56.760phase where the where it's the creation of the pronoun distinction where they recognize that
00:34:02.640they're an other they see someone and they think oh actually i'm a me that's actually a
00:34:11.040developmental phase of the child and as soon as that happens that that's traumatic i know trauma
00:34:17.560gets thrown thrown all over the place but that is quite traumatic so reading those fairy tales to
00:34:23.840children it what i was talking about having adequate rituals when a parent is reading a story
00:34:31.360about fear about you know about going to the grandmother hang on that grandmother looks a bit
00:34:37.000dangerous looks a bit frightening you know because it's a wolf it's a wolf dressed up as
00:34:42.900your grandma and you know and and and and children fear death children know about death their world
00:34:50.240is very small all that stuff's really important i just want to build real quick on what you said
00:34:55.240there chris about about death like a small child's think i mean this again another thing that sets
00:35:00.620apart from the animals is we know we're going to die and you're introduced to that inevitably as a
00:35:06.140child whether you really grasp it or not but at some point as a small child you you're told that
00:35:11.040the people you love are going to die and that you are going to die now again that is a traumatic
00:35:17.180thing it really is a traumatic thing most of us go through our lives just not really thinking
00:35:21.820about it but you know it's there um and so i know when i was a kid when i was a kid i was
00:35:27.040i was fascinated in history obviously and i'd be told all the stories from alexander to caesar to
00:35:32.360henry the fifth whatever and i'll inevitably be like well how did he die and like the bloodier
00:35:38.840and gorier and more horrific it is the more i was like oh really when i'm like eight or whatever
00:35:42.880but there you go because it appeals to the things that you've been thinking about because you don't
00:35:47.420have a job you haven't got to earn money you haven't got to go shopping so you're left with
00:35:51.080the realities i mean i would have it that culture exists to fill that space between birth and death
00:35:58.760it's like a distraction that's why we do it because otherwise you're just faced with the
00:36:03.920truth the ultimate truth is that this is temporary you're a visitor and so we we we do these things
00:36:11.840we create these things to take our mind off it but going back to cultural narratives and this
00:36:17.300is really important again especially with repetition and stories culture is there it's a
00:36:24.500It's a shared, it's a shared group of stories or group is a weird word.
00:36:31.140I don't know what the communal noun is for stories, but it's a load of stories that a particular people share and have repeated through generations.
00:36:41.140And it's crazy that in Western Europe now, we're being told that our culture, the exclusive agent in our civilization has to be inclusive.
00:36:56.320Because that negates the very reason for existing culture exists to say to others, you're not us.
00:39:39.700I mean, my household, we were poor, working class, three up, two down terraced house, but we had a massive bookcase, well, more than one massive bookcase.
00:39:48.000And we read. I was read two when I was a child, and I read a fair bit as soon as I could read.
00:39:55.220But nowadays, that is a dying thing. I was talking about it.
00:39:59.260In fact, on The Breakfast Show this morning, there was a story saying, reading is good for your mind and your soul and your health, regardless of what genre it is.
00:40:08.460And I was like, yeah, obviously, but reading, tell me what you think about this, Chris, that reading seems to be, let alone writing, reading seems to be a dying thing.
00:40:17.120Yeah, sure, people will read a web page.
00:40:20.320Yeah, people will read a bit of what they want to read on the internet.
00:48:51.440I never seriously tried to get the novels I wrote in my 20s or early 30s published because I knew
00:48:58.800I could tell that they're not that great I feel what makes a good novel is when you read it
00:49:08.920you feel as though you're in the hands of an expert writer an expert storyteller that the
00:49:16.140person that's writing it the author has got a very very highly developed highly honed
00:49:22.680sort of a literary sensibility that only comes with age every now and again you might see don't0.98
00:49:31.940you an 11 year old has published a novel have they it will be shit and they've only done it1.00
00:49:36.440because their dad owns the publishing company yeah no it will be shit it will be shit you need1.00
00:49:41.200to have lived a life and you need to have honed a literary sensibility over many many many many0.98
00:49:46.720years otherwise it's not going to be very good that's my that's my feeling that's my opinion
00:49:52.720and as for the art of storytelling god chris we're already probably two-thirds of the way
00:49:57.420through our time i'd love to just talk about just this with you for a couple of hours
00:50:00.420is the whole world the whole sphere around crafting a story so you talked about how you do it mostly
00:50:08.760in the first person I do it nearly always or always really in the sort of third person
00:50:13.640omniscient narrator and so then I've got so many decisions to make and I'm second guessing myself
00:50:19.180nearly all the time it's like am I going to do a piece of third person narration am I going to set
00:50:24.160the scene how flowery how florid am I going to do it is it going to be a soft touch or am I going
00:50:28.720to do a whole Dickens paragraph of description of the room etc etc and then when I've got some
00:50:33.800dialogue now is it the right point for dialogue okay is the dialogue going to be a few pages of
00:50:38.420dialogue or is it just going to be a couple of points of dialogue and then and then endlessly
00:50:42.860second guessing myself about the dialogue itself oh i'm not a good dialogue writer i can't write
00:50:46.860dialogue i'm not worthy and then and then and on and on and on and on am i going to end the scene
00:50:52.660there at what you know and then actually actually truly like the meta crafting of the story not
00:50:58.600just the craft of the individual paragraph the individual chapter the individual bits of
00:51:02.280description and dialogue you're doing but the crafting of the overall meta narrative at what
00:51:06.400point do I break scene here do I just um do I just uh montage ahead two years into the future now
00:51:13.120or not and on and on and on and on second guessing myself for years on end um but at some point I
00:51:21.380think it would I think it might have been Rolf Harris of all people talked about again the
00:51:28.740analogy the parallel of an oil painting he said at a certain point you just have to abandon it
00:51:34.740because it will never be finished you can keep polishing it you can keep touching it further and
00:51:39.360further and further detail and it will never be finished it will not be perfect ever so at some
00:51:44.680point you as the creator as the author in this instance you have to say right and there's a line
00:51:50.200under it it's done I'm finished with it and but when is that point when is that point I mean the
00:51:56.040the decisions it's a difficult thing writing I mean tell me a little bit more about your process
00:52:00.380how you deal with those types of questions well first of all perfection is a killer just forget
00:52:06.200about it yeah secondly you're writing a book you know grow up you're right that's all you're doing
00:52:12.580you're writing a book i mean it's significant it's important but it's not you're not carving
00:52:18.620it in stone it's just you're just writing it on paper so just go for it my the novel i've been
00:52:24.380writing for 10 years the spine of it is written in the first person present which is very clunky
00:52:31.560it's very clunky to read you know it you open it and it's like i'm walking down the road
00:52:37.620most people are used to first person pass don't they i was walking down the road you know 10
00:52:44.020years ago but my you know and you're like hang on a minute this is happening now okay but in the
00:52:51.220same paragraph i'll change tenses because i just write like that and because because although i'm
00:52:57.560writing in the first person i'm having memories the character who's in the in the present is
00:53:04.240remembering something this is why it's taken 10 years because it's got like a mandelbrock structure
00:53:10.560to it i can give you i can give you an exact example from the novel i'm sitting in the french
00:53:16.160house on dean street lovely boozer if ever you're in soho go to the french house on dean street
00:53:21.920and uh i was very young and it's in the story it's in it's in the the new manuscript
00:53:29.580or the old manuscript and and it's the story of the the leslie the woman behind the jump the
00:53:37.780landlady she says i don't know why they don't just go around to the park on wardour street
00:53:43.600and lock them all up everyone knows they sell heroin and i think i'm gonna go and buy some
00:53:51.320you know i was like 23 all right and it's it's relevant to the novel because the novel follows
00:53:58.880the true story of me going to thailand to cold turkey in a guest house so so so i tell i tell
00:54:08.900so i'm walking down the road and i'm sort of you know the withdrawal starting to kick in in the
00:54:13.000present and i'll say the first time i tried it i was it and then it goes into first person past
00:54:18.620because i was in the french house pub 30 years ago so then it's in the past as i'm walking out
00:54:26.280of the french house i walk past the admiral duncan which was a boozer that got blown up
00:54:32.240when i was in the french house once so then i start telling that story so already i'm in thailand
00:54:40.680walking down the road in the present then i've started talking about the french house and leslie
00:54:45.220telling me where i can score skag i decided to go and score that but then i'd walk past the admiral
00:54:51.160duncan and i talk about that being blown up but there was three other bombs that year when i was
00:54:57.580in the same town or city when they went off so i start talking about those stories about all these
00:55:03.700bombs going off when i was there one on brick lane when i was living in bethnal green as a kid when i
00:55:08.960went up to carnaby street to buy my mod parker in the 1982 mod revival i mean the fishtail used
00:55:14.700to drag along the floor behind me and and now and now i'm talking about that from that goes this
00:55:20.640between leaving the french house to go and score on wardour street there's about 50 pages
00:55:28.040of other stories and each of those stories another story comes out of it and another
00:55:35.100comes out of that that's why i liken it to a mandelbrock or fractals perhaps is easy
00:55:40.240but what i've got to do i've got to trace my footsteps back because i can't not finish the
00:55:49.840i'm a bit i'm a bit unwilling to say original story but i've got to get back to
00:55:58.220walking out of the french house to go and score because that's part of the the spine of the story
00:56:06.500the first time i used error in so but but i don't just walk around there all those memories that i
00:56:14.180that come to me on the walk around there come into the come into the manuscript but like
00:56:21.060but the decision making process chris so like what makes you decide well that branch and for
00:56:27.280this long and if there's any dialogue in it or not and at what point do you return to the original
00:56:32.740thing oh these are decisions decision after decision after decision does it just sort of
00:56:37.420flow out kind of naturally or is it like is it are you endlessly well over years like no that's
00:56:44.080not quite right that has to go there and you know as much as is required but I've learned that from
00:56:51.880writing for 30 years it's just a judgment you know i've sort of i've found a voice that works
00:56:58.040for me that doesn't necessarily mean it works for other people i mean people familiar with my
00:57:04.000substack will have read stories where i just endlessly digress um but surely with a short
00:57:10.660story it's it's uh slightly different well it is it's a very different form actually because you
00:57:17.900can you know three thousand words or whatever although some of them are they're long shorts
00:57:22.280um but you know is it relevant is it adding to the story is it you know i don't just i this isn't
00:57:31.460just a free for all of things i can remember but is that is this showing is this giving the
00:57:38.220character depth is this foreshadowing things that happen later in a way where things that happen
00:57:46.240later are going to land heavier because hang on a minute that weird little bit he spoke about
00:57:54.880100 pages ago it's obvious that he's going to do this now because that's the sort of person he
00:58:03.060grew up as so when when you ask me what do you keep in what do you take out it you know it's
00:58:11.420it's kind of it's very subjective but what's required and and whether it adds to the story
00:58:19.000in a in in a way that makes it a better reading experience but but just before i let you give you
00:58:26.180let you get a word in edgeways um i don't believe reading is a passive act there's where my work
00:58:38.140you know just as in music the silences are as just as important as the notes saying the silence
00:58:45.420is out of a bit of mozart and it's just a racket they're just as important so what you leave out
00:58:51.840of a novel of a story is equally important as what you put in so when a reader reads my stuff
00:58:59.920and i leave stuff out i don't want i don't want them to read any of my stuff my shorts love in
00:59:07.260The Time of Nudie Mags, the new novel, the old novel, anything passively.
00:59:12.000I want them to be actively engaged in the creation of meaning.
00:59:18.580And that's going to be different for every reader because they are a context of themselves.
00:59:26.180If I if I if I write about a working class, if I mention a working class kid that had a lot of books in his house and was read to and had a black and white telly.
00:59:36.560they didn't have a telephone you're going to identify with that because you because that's
00:59:41.380that was your experience of upbringing you told me earlier in this in this chat but there might be a
00:59:47.900an upper middle class an upper class person reading it and that's totally foreign to them
00:59:53.400so the same words but a different meaning i always say this the words are mine but the meaning
01:00:00.880belongs to the reader and they will translate that according to their personal context
01:00:07.880well that is what question sorry go on yep to answer your question i don't know is the answer
01:00:16.000i'm trying to contrive something the truth is and i think it's the best thing to say in any
01:00:21.600conversation if it's true i don't know i don't know why i why that stays and that goes it just
01:00:29.400feels right when i read it back i'm like that works and as you were saying about um uh rolf
01:00:37.800varis good lord um you know it's the same with writing you don't finish a novel a novel finishes
01:00:44.440you you just like i'm done i'm done no yeah i'm on the last draft of the i mean the the the one
01:00:53.620i've been writing for 10 years it's it's insane it's it's it's like there's there's whole sections
01:00:59.460written like a film noir sort of scene and it's just and it comes out the blue there's no there's
01:01:05.920been nothing about film noir in the first 100 pages and then suddenly you know it's just something
01:01:12.120out of chinatown the book is also made up inside the text there's nursery rhymes there's advert
01:01:20.640advertising slogans. There's dialogue from movies that I've used as non-dialogue, as prose
01:01:32.800in the text. It's as if I've got all the cultural sort of baggage that has been imposed on me in
01:01:40.420the 54 years I've been alive, run it out into that text. So people will be reading it and
01:01:47.920there's a there's a description of me going into a brothel or something and in the conversation
01:01:53.140i'm having someone thinking what's that hang on that's an alca seltzer that's an alca seltzer
01:01:59.520advertising line or they might read another bit like i've used loads of apocalypse now in it
01:02:05.020loads because i will have i need a film on when i'm writing i can't do music i can't do silence
01:02:11.880i'll always have a film on and apocalypse now is visually wonderful i need silence
01:02:17.000as i'm writing and captain willard says something amazing i think i'll have that
01:02:26.160i might not put it in that bit so the book is like a cultural sponge the text is like a cultural
01:02:32.920sponge as well as the story but not for not for no reason because because that's the culture that
01:02:40.080readers have grown up in as well that's part of their memory system i do it i do it very
01:02:46.180differently we've got all different styles of voices there where you do it sounds like you've
01:02:51.700got all different voices i uh i um sort of uh get uh spend a lot of time and energy making the voice
01:03:01.200at least the voice of the narrator the omniscient narrator as perfectly uniform as possible
01:03:08.200if anything in the voice of it so it's not jumping around between tenses it's not jumping
01:03:14.260around between different styles that at least the narrator itself is uniform throughout the whole
01:03:21.420book uh but that's just me that's just the artistic decision i've decided to to go with
01:03:26.900but bo when you talk you jump around tenses you've just done it then yeah why would you
01:03:33.980change that when you're writing because it's imperfect it's normal it's just normal what
01:03:40.320people do but i want that text to be as good as it can be basically as good as it can be i want it
01:03:46.860to be able to stand the test of time i want someone to be able to pick it up a hundred years
01:03:51.880from now 500 years from now and read a quality piece of literature that's why so so do i don't
01:03:58.480get me wrong i'm not saying i'm not saying that at all no i'm not saying that at all i'm not saying
01:04:02.560that at all don't get me wrong i've just perhaps i obsess over it far too well i know i obsess over
01:04:07.840it far too much that thing about perfection you're never going to get it stop trying just let it go
01:04:13.300it's easier said than done though it's easier said done so one of the things one of the things
01:04:16.800actually talked about right at the beginning or you talked about and I wanted to jump in and add
01:04:21.220to it um but you'd moved on to like a dozen other things that were interesting but that thing you
01:04:26.660said where people are really quite brutal when it comes to writing for some reason if you say
01:04:31.880oh I've tried my hand a bit of making pottery people are usually quite kind oh have you yeah
01:05:03.080You must have come across that in your life.
01:05:04.440Yes, but I think that's actually defendable, because it's like we've all got a voice, and I mean a physical voice, we've all got a voice, and everyone will sing at some point, if they're at home on their own, and something comes on the radio or whatever, on the wireless, and they might go, I've always loved you, it's not very good.
01:05:29.440now most people can write they can write with a pen or a computer whatever but they're not experts
01:05:38.640they haven't put the work in learning how to do it they haven't refined their voice they haven't
01:05:44.540read enough they don't they haven't looked at the world around them in a way where they can0.99
01:05:50.300translate it and that's why i will to an extent defend people saying that's shit because it0.88
01:05:59.360usually is well yeah well yeah yeah because people because people can write because we're0.92
01:06:05.100all taught it at school they then go from i can write to well if i write loads i've written a
01:06:12.180novel but they're not an expert do you understand like i think a writer needs to be as much of an
01:06:19.700expert as an architect an architect studies architecture at school or let's say a brain
01:06:26.540surgeon, studies medicine for like eight, nine years, and then has to stand by the master
01:06:33.000watching for another four or five years before they're even allowed anywhere near a real
01:06:39.040operation. A writer has to have that same level of expertise, if they're to have any relevant
01:06:47.200social role or function, which leads on to what you said, and then later a historical function,
01:09:29.140If you're sitting there, this is why it's a heavy weight on you.
01:09:32.320This is why it's like a burden on you.
01:09:34.240And this is why you haven't finished it.
01:09:35.880Because if you're trying to write it in a way where every reader,
01:09:42.020every possible reader reads it as you intended it.
01:09:46.960Oh, I know that's impossible. I know that's impossible though as well.
01:09:50.360You misunderstood your tools. You don't understand your tools because language doesn't work like that.
01:09:56.860Forget it. Tell your story. There's too much space between the writer and the text and the text and the reader for you to have any control over how they're going to interpret it.
01:10:12.600you can give them signposts but they're going to choose what direction that signpost is going to
01:10:20.660take okay put it like this chris have you ever written a piece perhaps just a descriptive piece
01:10:24.840and then you ask someone who's read it like what did you get from it what's the sort of image you
01:10:31.260you built in your mind or you know describe to me read tell me back what you got from that piece
01:10:37.200of descriptive writing and they they describe something that was nowhere near nowhere near what
01:10:44.040you intended like not like not even close in fact sometimes the opposite when I've had that feedback
01:10:49.500I feel like I've I've failed as the writer I've failed to even begin to to paint the picture for
01:10:57.480them it's like I'm not I'm not happy with that and I get that it's impossible as you said impossible
01:11:03.960to actually do it properly for all people of course of course that's an exercise in impossibility
01:11:07.660but to get it as best as possible to get it as close as possible you you wouldn't mind if someone
01:11:14.520read some of your prose and just got the opposite of what you intended you wouldn't mind that
01:11:20.240wouldn't bother you i would have to uh it would that that would be pulling the rug out from under
01:11:25.320my total understanding of language memory and writing i mean the beauty of substack is i put
01:11:33.880a short story up and i'll get 60 comments and they're all different if everyone was like oh
01:11:42.120this made me think of this or this maybe and they were all the same i'll be like hang on i've got
01:11:47.160this language like wrong how the hell has this happened you know if they were all robots maybe
01:11:54.460but hopefully uh they're not no you can't do it you can't do it what you can do is aim for truth
01:12:03.860that's what I do I had I had an eight-week experience in Thailand I want to tell that
01:12:10.880story I know that language never settles it's constantly deferred you talk about you talked
01:12:18.620about writing a book and in a hundred years someone reading it it may it may work they may
01:12:24.400well still enjoy it but it's going to mean so much it's going to be so different because a hundred
01:12:30.480years has passed you know about you know imagine reading the naked lunch borris's cut and paste
01:12:37.700when he when it come out i think uh what's that late 50s early 60s when it came out if this was
01:12:44.140revolutionary what what's this narrative structure this reads like he's just chopped up a lot of
01:12:50.200notebooks and stuck them together because that's what he done read someone releases that now it'd
01:12:57.520be like oh it's like the naked lunch oh it's a cut and paste because we've done that we've been
01:13:02.100there i mean language is a fool's errand anyway you because because it doesn't it it never set
01:13:09.260up language is context dependent and context is always moving and so what you what what i try to
01:13:18.260do is try and document the truth of my memory using language and then let it go let it go and
01:13:31.720it's a living thing after that if someone if someone comes back to me say i read your novel
01:13:38.680and you know what you experienced what you went through blah blah blah whatever they said i'd
01:13:46.580have to accept i wouldn't say to them no you got it wrong how can i that too yeah you laugh you see
01:13:52.480i would yeah you've heard oh sorry sorry no i misunderstood what question you asked would i
01:13:59.600laugh sorry i think i misunderstood what you was asking there say it again right so if i wrote
01:14:05.140something and it yeah i put it out there i described the novel as a living thing yeah you
01:14:11.540know it's out of my hands once i've finished writing it and then if someone come back to me
01:14:16.340and they said, oh, I read your novel, the one where I was looking for truth.
01:14:20.820Let's take the 10,000 words, multi-layered, Mandelbrot, many tenses,
01:14:26.960cultural sponge novel that I've been writing.
01:14:31.200And they say to me, it made me think about this and it made me think about that.
01:14:37.280And, you know, it seems to me that you think addiction is blah, blah, blah.
01:14:42.320i i would never say to them no you got it wrong you've got it wrong you've missed misread my book
01:14:51.500you've interpreted it you've interpreted it incorrectly and the reason i laughed is because
01:14:57.840i said i wouldn't say that and you went i would that seems yeah i would and i mean this i mean
01:15:05.640that this comes from a good place that seems ludicrous to me really a writer would say to a
01:15:11.800reader no you got it wrong how do they get it wrong there's no right or wrong there yeah no i
01:15:19.660would absolutely if if i've got an intention an aim and if i failed to express that properly
01:15:25.900then i failed as the writer and they have misinterpreted it but i guess we're just
01:15:31.620we're looking at in a complete entirely philosophically different way i think we're
01:15:37.760looking at it in like a profoundly different way like why i think i think of my prose my fiction
01:15:43.260as like a a an exercise in telling a specific story and that story yeah and that story what
01:15:50.880does that story have meaning hopefully yeah hopefully so you can tell the story perfectly
01:15:58.120you know the cat sat on the mat right i've got that sorted out that um the owner fed the cat
01:16:06.060yeah that happened it was dark and gloomy i've explained that right but so you give that no you
01:16:14.800give that novel to two different people one of them is someone who grew up in afghanistan has
01:16:21.900fought in well just been a war person all their life uh it was an orphan born an orphan grew up
01:16:29.340in like you know like for red cross hospitals has got no legs the other person is elon musk do you
01:16:38.320think they're going to get the same meaning out of the same text no no of course not so why why do
01:16:45.860you seek to control that when when you when you just said you can't you've just come it's like
01:16:54.720it was like a confession bow of course no it's not possible but you aim for as close to that as
01:17:00.580you can in my mind so take this as an example chris say you write a passage and you meant that
01:17:07.140you as the author meant the passage to be read sarcastically right that was your intention as
01:17:12.520the author two different people read it one of them reads it correctly as sarcastic and the other
01:17:18.300one doesn't the other one takes it at face value surely you can say they've misinterpreted what
01:17:22.520you wrote you can't say yes that's perfectly valid it's not perfectly valid it was supposed
01:17:26.860to be sarcastic and they've failed to get that i can say to them that i intended that to be sarcasm
01:17:32.100but i'm not talking i'm talking about the meaning of it and that is always theirs the words are
01:17:40.360mine but the meaning's theirs every time without that i mean that's true that's fair i mean i
01:17:47.140understand what you i absolutely of course i understand what you're saying you know i think
01:17:50.640you'd write a brilliant book though well it is is quite tight the way i do it is sort of
01:17:57.780i'll finish it i'll finish it within the next year realistically hopefully less listen let me
01:18:03.780tell you i'm going to tell you something this might be the best bit of advice give up on it
01:18:09.220because when people talk about writer's block i've never had writer's block i have the opposite
01:18:14.880problem i can't stop writing i'll be up till 7 a.m writing that's why i'm half dead all the time