I wrote Otto Eckhart’s Ordeal four years ago and republished it a couple of months back. I am still trying to contain my thrill about that. I am a ghost writer, rarely allowed out to spook the public. Fiction is the toughest gig. It’s a feat to create a new world. No one really gives a shit apart from me. Even my mother hasn’t got around to reading it yet. She says she doesn’t want to be forced to lie about liking it. I don’t care. You don’t do it so people can tell you you’re marvellous. You do it because you can, and you want to, or need to.
‘Look at me! Look at me! I have written a novel!’
‘So what? And shut up, I’m watching TV - still.’
A minor shit was given when the book was shortlisted, but public joy soon subsided, the fetes packed up and the bunting came down. After about a day. Don’t care. I admire anyone who writes a novel, even myself. It’s a hard, blistering road, and I walked it. This is how mine came into being, how I experienced the slow thrill of its emergence.
Otto suffered a painful birth and a troubled childhood, but it’s a happy little book now, dressed up in a lovely new cover designed by the brilliant Isabel Barrett. It’s ticking over quite nicely out there in the infinite superstore that is the global book market, picking up a pleasing review from time to time. It won’t be long before I can take myself out for a meal on the royalties. I honestly don’t care if Otto Eckhart’s Ordeal sells only a few hundred copies.
A novel is different from a non-fiction work. It’s an immense effort and comes from deep, even if it is just a historical caper/thriller like Otto, not Anna Karenina. To produce it, you are not working from a stack of transcribed interview and research notes, the story known to you before you start; you are mining it out of nowhere. You are bringing into existence a new world with little people running around in it, just like us. I used to scoff when I heard or read an author saying, ‘Wait for the moment when the characters take over the writing!’ But, it’s true. You’re in their hands. Character drives action.
I guess, I’m describing ‘creation’. Yes, your characters run the show down there, but you, the writer, get to play God. That’s a buzz! If you want to kill someone, just kill ’em. Bang. Dead. If you want someone to fall in love, no problem. Romance? You got it. Coming up. Writing fiction is a mighty adventure, and I hope I can earn enough money elsewhere to write more. It’s hard fun. What’s more – and we can have a heated debate about this – I would argue that there is as much ‘Truth’ in fiction as there is in non-fiction. Not fact, but Truth, as felt and experienced.
After the first long chapter – setting up the premise, teeing up the jeopardy and the challenge, sketching the world, introducing the good guys and the bad guys, hinting at some romance – I got a little stuck. My narrative telescope couldn’t quite find its focus. There was a great deal to bring together to keep it structured, coherent and evenly paced. You can’t afford to let the reader drift for a single page. ‘Okay, fine, Mr Author, but what next? What next?! Come on! Keep me curious!’
I needed the drama to get going – and boy, did I get drama. Unfortunately, the drama was all mine and not Otto’s. Staggering drunk after a barrel of strong cider, gulped at a lick, I tripped on a tree root, running and reeling down a dark, slippery path alongside a fast-flowing estuary in Cornwall. I fell 15 feet onto a horizontal tree, broke six ribs, knocked myself out and slapped into the alluvial mud. (Lucky break #1, the tide was completely out). There was no wind (Lucky break #2) and my faint whimpering was heard by a late-night jogger (Lucky break #3, thank you forever Julian Mitchell). The returning tide was lapping over me when he found a way down to the scene of the sad man in the slime. When he – and a second Samaritan – finally managed to get me back onto the path, muddied and bloodied, and then the mile back to a village, I was as good as dead.
I tell you this for good reason, not to evoke pity (It was the best moment of my life, in hindsight, so I don’t want any of that, thanks). After eight days in Derriford hospital in Plymouth, I returned home clutching my Oramorph, liquid morphine, a lovely little opioid, for the pain. (It is easy to understand why GPs are wary of prescribing it!) I returned to Otto the next day and the scenes flowed out of me like, well, like a fast-flowing estuary. This was the end of October, and by Christmas the book was as good as done. That’s good flow!
Sadly, I came off the Oramorph after ten days. Not so sadly I came off the booze, probably forever. I am grateful to that stubby little root (I have been back to thank it with my noble rescuer Julian) because for a year or so the booze had become more meds than merriment. Good riddance!
It wasn’t so much the opioids that kickstarted my creative flow; it was the joy of being alive, of being given a second chance, of starting over. As I recovered, I had an urgency to create, not to wreck. I wanted to create a world of menace and darkness in which all hope appears to have been lost; a story in which good things will happen, the happy end will come … with a bit of courage and a little love and help from family and friends. (I showed a bit of the former and received a heap of the latter.) I believe these experiences and impulses translated straight to the page in the story I ended up telling. Love and Courage – that’s pretty well all you need.
