Michael Walters

It took optimism to enrol on a creative writing MA — I can be a writer! I can be published! — but as I get older, I’ve also developed a pragmatism, tipping into cynicism, which can easily become procrastination, or even complete avoidance.

Writing feels dangerous. I have a strong, sometimes brutal, censor. It’s safer emotionally to not write the weird, violent, embarrassing, possibly shameful, STUFF, and I’m an engineer for a living, so there are endless projects and problems for me to lose myself in. I’ll write a post for my website, hell, I’ll rewrite my website in a new programming language, but I won’t write a few lines of dialogue to get a new story started.

This website is also called ‘Notes from the Peninsula’. During lockdown, I got into podcasts, and I had an idea to start one of my own where I pretended to be a writer in a fictional seaside town talking about the uncanny, ghostly happenings he observed as he tried to write a novel. There was enough energy in the idea for me to create a Patreon account, buy a microphone, research recording tips and record a dozen episodes of me talking about what I’d been reading and watching.

“We are called to become more fully what we are, in simple service to the richness of the universe of possibilities.” - James Hollis

Writing rarely energises me like that. My natural enthusiasms are all over the place, and I’ve spent too much time fighting my desire to diversify. Getting a novel published felt like a validation, but it also made clear writing had to be a hobby because the economics of publishing is stacked in favour of the big publishers. Considering the amount of energy, life force, and years of effort required to write a literary novel, it’s sensible to ask — if there is no money and little chance of success, why bother?

Or more usefully, why make art? And what is success to me?

Rick Rubin’s book The Creative Act: A Way of Being is about making art. He believes artists channel the universe/nature through their work, which is a bit hippy-dippy for me, but if you replace nature with the unconscious, I’m in. This unconscious material comes in dreams classically, but also fantasies, slips of the tongue, play of all kinds and especially improvisation. These all bypass the censor, and if we’re doing it well, they’ll bring to the surface unexpected feelings, weird images, dark thoughts and surprising connections. This is the raw material of art.

“One engages with work because it is meaningful, and if it is not, one changes the work.” - James Hollis.

If I want to write more stories, I need to rediscover the playfulness and joy of making things up with words. I want to finish more stories and make them as good and true to themselves as I can. That is real success. How they are received in the world is out of my control.

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I spent the weekend before my father’s funeral sorting through his books. He had them on shelves in different rooms, but they were also tucked in drawers, stacked at the bottom of wardrobes and piled behind old televisions. Some went straight to the tip because of damage or being completely out of time, but there were also entire fantasy series, thrillers, horror, that people would still want today.

On a whim, I called in the local library, which is now community-run and needing funds, and I offered them his collection, and amazingly they said yes. Taibach Library is where he took me for my first library tickets when I was five, so it’s part of my story as well as is. He would love that his books are going back into his community.

Dad’s death wiped clean my imagined year ahead and brought up some big questions, like why bother doing anything if we decay to nothing? But his energy lingers in his objects and spaces. When I hold the TV remote I see him in his chair, and when I pull out his books I can see him smile. I’ve created these intense associations from decades of being with him: lottery numbers, glasses cases, his cereal bowl, the knife he preferred, his favourite radio station, the way he liked the recycling bins to be put out, the bird table, fluorescent tubed lighting in the kitchen, golf clubs, his favourite pruners and gardening gloves. I project my memories of him onto the space through the objects I see.

That’s like reading. We turn sentences into our own version of what the author imagined. In that way, our lives are a gift to everyone who spends time with us, because they create versions of us for themselves. Both my parents live on in me as memories I can talk with whenever I want.

The path I’d imagined for 2024 was vague. Dad’s deteriorating health was a constant threat to any plans, so I found myself being reactive and anxious. Sometimes life needs us to step off the path we think we’re on and go into the woods. I lost my literary ambitions for a while. It’s been ten years since I enrolled for the creative writing MA, and five years since The Complex was published. Dad won’t read my next book. His reaction to The Complex was that he liked it. That was it. He wasn’t one to articulate feelings, especially love, so that had to be enough, but it’s a tender spot, because part of me was writing for his approval.

Anyway, I had a dream where I wanted to take an important kick in a rugby match, but an old friend with more natural talent pointed out that I didn’t have the power. I knew they were right, and that I had to get serious and practice. That’s about as literal as dreams can get short of dreaming that your house is on fire and waking up to find your house on fire.

• 01.01: SILENT NIGHT (2021), dir. Camille Griffin
• 02.01: Assembly, Natasha Brown (01.01)
• 06.01: Infidelities, Kirsty Gunn (02.01)

I’ve deleted my Patreon creator’s account, which was beginning to feel like I was cheating on my website (or the other way around, I’m not sure). Two places for almost the same words, except on Patreon I was receiving money to support me as an artist, and here it’s always been the spirit of blogging on the “free Web”. I haven’t reconciled those two things. A writer needs to pay the bills, and every story (or blog post, or skeet) is a gift. It’s straightforward economically but not psychologically.

One of the things I did on Patreon to “add value” was post a list of films and books I’d read at the end of each month, in the spirit of Steven Soderbergh’s SEEN, READ lists. I published my 2023 Seen, Read list on New Year’s Day. People are fascinated by what famous directors are engaged with while they make their films, so there’s a ta-da moment to the yearly list, but nobody gives a shit about my annual list. I wondered if I could use the concept to think aloud about what I’m watching and reading in relation to what I’m writing. I’m going to give it a go in January. And keep the posts short.

I found Silent Night to be tonally jarring, but that might be the point—a broad comedy (Keira Knightley is hilarious) with vague references to a coming apocalypse that turns hard in the final act into the existential horrors of climate change. It mocks the rich mercilessly and brings a reckoning for their denial of feelings, suffering, and reality. Saltburn did a similar thing in a different way.

There is a far more subtle takedown of the rich in Assembly. A black woman working at a global bank in the City feels the relentless pressure to conform to the expectations of a colonialism-created patriarchy. The title refers to the school assemblies she presents at, and the way she experiences her life as a Frankenstein monster of things other people need her to be. Her boyfriend comes from a rich family. She learns she has cancer and hides it from him. It’s fierce! And it’s the shortest novel (cough) I’ve read at 100 pages.

Infidelities is a collection of short stories. The final story, Infidelity, was the most interesting, in that it digs into the mechanics of writing, playing with all the little decisions writers make and what it means to write something that feels right. It takes care and courage to write a story that has integrity—a useful reminder of what’s at stake.

• FILMS IN ALL CAPS (C if in cinema)
• Books, by author, on end date (with start date)

Here’s my list for 2023:

• 01.01 THE CONVERSATION
• 10.01 JOAN DIDION: THE CENTER WILL NOT HOLD
• 12.01 THE VELVET UNDERGROUND
• 14.01 THE BATMAN
• 19.01 LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD
• 21.01 THE MENU
• 25.01 BLUE THUNDER
• 29.01 The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham (18.01)
• 30.01 THE CHINA SYNDROME
• 01.02 HARRY DEAN STANTON: PARTLY FICTION
• 02.02 M3GAN (C)
• 04.02 AFTERSUN
• 06.02 SR.
• 09.02 SUMMER OF SOUL
• 11.02 WORLD WAR Z; DIE HARD
• 14.02 SIBYL
• 17.02 BULLET TRAIN
• 18.02 JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION
• 23.02 FIRE OF LOVE; BARBARIAN
• 26.02 JADE
• 27.02 The Drowned World, J.G. Ballard (02.02)
• 02.03 ORCHESTRATOR OF STORMS: THE FANTASTIQUE WORLD OF JEAN ROLLIN
• 04.03 STARSHIP TROOPERS; THE GAME
• 05.03 THE SWIMMER (1968)
• 07.03 8½
• 10.03 OFFICIAL COMPETITION
• 11.03 WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR
• 15.03 SPASMO
• 19.03 EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
• 20.03 Weather, Jenny Offil (03.03)
• 24.03 THE HAUNTING OF MARGAM CASTLE
• 24.03 GLASTONBURY THE MOVIE IN FLASHBACK
• 26.03 THE LAIR
• 26.03 Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector (22.03)
• 27.03 SAVAGE DAWN
• 29.03 NIGHTMARE AT NOON
• 01.04 THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS
• 03.04 BARTON FINK
• 09.04 KING COHEN: THE WILD WORLD OF FILMMAKER LARRY COHEN
• 10.04 JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 (C)
• 11.04 A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle (23.03)
• 12.04 LA NOTTE
• 15.04 SAINT JACK
• 16.04 RENFIELD (C)
• 17.04 MOONAGE DAYDREAM
• 18.04 PIECES
• 29.04 STUTZ; TREMORS 2: AFTERSHOCKS
• 01.05 JURASSIC PARK
• 06.05 EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS
• 07.05 DUNE (2021)
• 12.05 BATMAN
• 13.05 BATMAN RETURNS
• 16.05 THE RELIC
• 17.05 Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion (15.05)
• 19.05 THE EQUALIZER
• 20.05 THE EQUALIZER 2
• 21.05 HEAT (C)
• 28.05 FIGHT CLUB (C)
• 29.05 LETHAL WEAPON; Dreams of Sleep, Josephine Humphreys (23.05)
• 02.06 SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (C)
• 03.06 HAYWIRE
• 04.06 DÉJÀ VU
• 10.06 CONFESS, FLETCH; PLUNGING ON ALONE: MONTE HELLMAN’S LIFE IN A DAY; The Bloater, Rosemary Tonks (07.06)
• 11.06 THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (C)
• 12.06 THE OUTFIT
• 15.06 No One is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood (14.06)
• 17.06 CLUE
• 17.06 THE FLASH (C)
• 23.06 Scent of a City, Aki Gibbons (18.06)
• 24.06 ASTEROID CITY (C); The Midwich Cuckoos, John Wyndham (21.06)
• 25.06 THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT (C)
• 30.06 EXTRACTION
• 01.07 EXTRACTION 2
• 06.07 ASTEROID CITY (C)
• 08.07 ELEMENTAL (C)
• 09.07 INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (C)
• 11.07 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE (C)
• 15.07 THE FUGITIVE
• 16.07 THE BIG LEBOWSKI (C)
• 20.07 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE (C)
• 22.07 BARBIE (C)
• 23.07 BERGMAN ISLAND; What About Men, Caitlin Moran (23.07)
• 24.07 LA DOLCE VITA
• 30.07 SOME LIKE IT HOT (C)
• 04.08 JAWS
• 06.08 MEG 2: THE TRENCH (C)
• 12.08 DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES
• 14.08 ONE FINE MORNING
• 15.08 DEEP BLUE SEA 3
• 16.08 FATHER OF MY CHILDREN; SHARKSPLOITATION
• 18.08 AFTER YANG
• 19.08 [REC] 3: GENESIS; OPPENHEIMER (C); Eastmouth and Other Stories, Alison Moore (02.08)
• 21.08 [REC] 4: APOCALYPSE
• 25.08 GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES; THEATER CAMP (C)
• 27.08 Losing Track, Imogen Reid (25.08)
• 03.09 THE EQUALIZER 3 (C)
• 04.09 Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
• 05.09 SMILE
• 09.09 PAST LIVES (C)
• 10.09 INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (C)
• 11.09 The Memory Police, Yōko Ogawa
• 13.09 AN IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT
• 16.09 A HAUNTING IN VENICE (C)
• 17.09 THE CURSED
• 18.09 THE BROKEN
• 19.09 DIARY OF THE DEAD
• 20.09 SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD
• 23.09 EYE IN THE LABYRINTH; STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER
• 24.09 THE EXORCIST III; THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (C)
• 25.09 THE PALE BLUE EYE
• 30.09 65
• 02.10 RE-ANIMATOR
• 04.10 THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE
• 06.10 CASTLE FREAK
• 07.10 SCREAM
• 07.10 SCREAM VI
• 08.10 THE CREATOR (C)
• 09.10 DEATH SHIP
• 10.10 SLUGS
• 11.10 THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM
• 12.10 CRIMES OF THE FUTURE
• 14.10 DON’T LOOK NOW (C)
• 15.10 MESSIAH OF EVIL
• 17.10 INFINITY POOL
• 18.10 LIFEFORCE
• 18.10 THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD
• 20.10 DUEL
• 20.10 EVIL DEAD II
• 21.10 INVADERS FROM MARS
• 22.10 YOU’RE NEXT
• 24.10 CLOVERFIELD
• 27.09 Sea State, Tabitha Lasley (23.09)
• 28.10 THE KILLER (C)
• 29.10 ENEMY
• 31.10 HALLOWEEN; Brother of the More Famous Jack, Barbara Trapido (27.09)
• 04.11 THE SOUVENIR: PART II
• 11.11 THE MARVELS (C)
• 12.11 DREAM SCENARIO (C)
• 17.11 SALTBURN (C)
• 19.11 THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES (C)
• 27.11 THE KILLER
• 28.11 6 UNDERGROUND
• 29.11 LAKE PLACID
• 30.11 MICHAEL CLAYTON
• 03.12 LOVE ACTUALLY (C)
• 09.12 SIBERIA
• 10.12 THE HOLIDAY (C)
• 11.12 SHOWING UP
• 15.12 WONKA (C)
• 16.12 Children of Paradise, Camilla Grudova (15.12)
• 24.12 PUSS IN BOOTS: THE LAST WISH
• 25.12 SHERLOCK HOLMES (2009)
• 26.12 FERRARI (C)
• 29.12 My Phantoms, Gwendoline Riley (27.12)
• 31.12 RETURN TO SEOUL

Using my Letterboxd stats, I have an excellent view of every film I’ve watched this year, as well as a score for each. (In hindsight, I disagree with some scores, but that’s the risk when you give a rating in the heat of the moment.)

I watched 148 films, three of them twice (Asteroid City, The Killer, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1). I gave thirty films 5 stars and only two films 1 star (Deep Blue Sea 3, The Haunting of Margam Castle). I skew high because I choose films I’m probably going to like. I also gave 30 films a heart, some of which were not 5-star films (Bergman Island, An Impossible Project, Lake Placid, The Lair of the White Worm, Pieces, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, The Game)

Anyway, here are my ten favourite film discoveries of 2023:

1. Asteroid City
2. The Killer
3. The Souvenir: Part 2
4. The Menu
5. Aftersun
6. Enemy
7. The Relic
8. Last Year at Marianbad
9. Moonage Daydream
10. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

I’m surprised how many of those are films that came out in 2023, considering the range of films I’ve seen this year.

And with less sexy stats available, my ten favourite books (in order of reading, not preference):

• The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
• Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion
• Dreams of Sleep, Josephine Humphreys
• The Bloater, Rosemary Tonks
• Scent of a City, Aki Gibbons
• Eastmouth and Other Stories, Alison Moore
• Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
• Brother of the More Famous Jack, Barbara Trapido
• Children of Paradise, Camilla Grudova
• My Phantoms, Gwendoline Riley

Somehow the year has tightened all the bolts on my rickety life, and I’m hitting the Christmas holidays in a good place. Dad is home from hospital with home care support — that didn’t look likely a week ago. My new job is going well. All the usual Christmas tasks are done or planned. It’s Christmas Eve. The kids are home and happy.

We won’t have my father-in-law at the table for dinner tomorrow, which is still difficult to fathom, and will only hit fully when we sit to eat. It’s been a difficult year all round, but that’s the biggest blow by far. And yet we are all okay, fundamentally. We are coping and looking after each other. This is part of life.

I haven’t written any new fiction this year, so my Patreon account has lost its way. The idea was to create a channel for publishing short stories, blog posts and photos to a smaller audience. I’m no longer sure I want to write stories. I’ll always write, I just need to think about what I want to write. I’ve had to step back from it this year, so it makes sense to look at the bigger picture and decide what I want to put my creative energy into in 2024. I posted a thank you and farewell, and I’ll delete the account before the next subscription payments are taken on January 1st.

I’m going to publish a ‘Seen, Read’ list for 2023 next week, and also some lists of my favourite films and books. There’s a week of 2023 to go, so there could still be some surprises. These lists help me tie the year off and look ahead. I hope you have some time to do whatever you need to do to feel good about the end of the year, or at least good enough. Happy Christmas. 🎄🕯️🕊️

The year keeps passing me surprises. Last week I was celebrating a new job back at my old employer, and I was looking forward to an unexpected week’s holiday before starting, then my father fell at home and went into hospital, and now I’m going to be living with him for a week to (fingers crossed) get him back on his feet. It’s like the universe lined my free week up for this task.

The transition between jobs, and sectors, from consultancy back to higher education, is an opportunity to reflect. I want to light a fire under my writing projects, and while I can’t say consultancy was bad for my writing, because I wasn’t writing before that either, getting that job did prioritise my tech career. Work consumed my attention in ways I didn’t expect. The pace, complexity and cultural differences filled my brain with unprocessed material that I had to diligently chug through during evenings and weekends.

In the strange weeks after handing my notice in, I found myself (once again) casting a net over all my creative interests. Guitar! Piano! German! Cooking! Coding! Reading! Writing! Yoga! I picked up Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It, by Oliver Burkeman, which I’d read before, and Zen Guitar, by Philip Toshio Sudo, a book that I’ve owned for twenty-five years and never read from cover to cover.

Zen Guitar is slim and conversational, but has a faintly formal tone that suits the subject matter. It applies principles of zen to learning guitar — doing things with the right spirit, from the inside out. Burkeman is funnier, taking apart the modern cult of time management and railing against the endless distractions we take up to avoid the work we want to do. We can imagine infinite possibilities for ourselves, but we have limited time, and we can only walk one path in the unknowable amount of it we have left to live.

Back in 2000, on telling my grandfather I was moving to London for a new job, he told me that he didn’t care what I did, as long as I did it well. I didn’t know then that he was in the final weeks of his life. That advice was sound, and moving coming from him then, but it bothered me, and I didn’t know why. I’ve come to know that doing things well is important, yes, but doing the right thing is more important. He gave me one piece of a two-piece puzzle.

After a rough year (which isn’t over yet), I’m setting myself up to do more of the right things in 2024. And why not try to do them well? It’s getting late. I want to make my ghosts happy.

I was caught in a work storm for a few months over the summer. Things settled enough for me to take a small risk, which paid off, and this, along with a tremendous lucky break, means I am finally able to tack for calmer waters. I’m being deliberately opaque. I’m sitting in relief’s front pocket like a joey in his mother’s pouch. Brief bliss.

That’s one part of my life. In another my father-in-law died. My wife went to live with her mother in his final weeks to help tend to him. Another storm, separate but overlapping, that eventually blew itself out. The hole where he was is stark, but he’s no longer suffering. It went from a small lump in June, to radiotherapy in August, to palliative care in September, to gone. The nurses had never seen anything like the wound on his neck that grew big enough to swallow him. Nature can be brutal.

He lived a full life and fought for it to his last breath. His death brought a different flavour of relief. I have my life partner back. We haven’t lived apart that long in the twenty-three years we’ve been together.

When you’re fighting to keep your ship afloat, you’re not thinking much beyond the next hour, the next day. Calmer waters means time to look after yourself. I’ve been limping around with a ridiculous injury that I’ve carried for over a year that I made worse with golf lessons. Golf! The least taxing of all outdoor sports! (I was wrong.) Deep gluteal syndrome. Too much sitting down, a lack of glute strength in general, and one side weaker than the other equals excruciating cramp in my right buttock. It’s funny when it’s not hurting. I found a physio and I’m doing the exercises. This was the third storm.

The final quadrant of my life, writing, is becalmed. (Work, family, health, writing - yes, four.) How could it not be with every other part in flames? Instead of writing, or even reading, I chose to lose myself in horror films instead. This worked well. It was soothing. Unreal.

This is what I wish for in 2024. I want to be fit and healthy again. I want my family to be well. I want work to be stimulating, but not overwhelming, which will allow time to stir the embers of my writing. The novel hasn’t gone away. I can feel energy for it. I want the words to flow. It’s sad that it feels like a luxury, or even a privilege, to be excited about life. I do appreciate it. I’m excited again!

Picked up Brother of the More Famous Jack. Barbara Trapido is an incredible writer. Nagging envy made me put it down after the first five pages. I’m a reader, thank God, but the writer in me takes a toll from everything I read. Reading is a solace; films too. Writing is torture.

Don’t edit the first draft. That’s the story told, and it might work for some, but it’s never worked for me. The advice is a mirage. When you are thirsty in a desert you are desperate for the oasis. Don’t censor—I agree with that. But don’t edit? Editing is where the work happens. For me. If you can bash out a solid first draft, I’m ragingly envious, but good for you. Enjoy. But editing is the activity that allows my unconscious to do its work. I don’t trust simple answers to complex questions. I know what has worked in writing a novel, and it was a difficult, draining path. But then, it could be I am a difficult and draining person.

I wish I enjoyed it more, that’s all. I wish that I believed more forcefully that writing was worth the effort and agonies. To write again I would have to put aside duties and comforts. The thing that hurts is that I don’t feel like I have a choice in whether I write or not. Turning away from the fight doesn’t mean the fighting stops, it prolongs it and lets it get meaner and dirtier. A writer not writing is carrying an infection of the soul. But I’ve said all this before with different words. I don’t want to be that writer who writes about a writer who doesn’t write. Christ, I exhaust myself.

I’ve been reading more this month. I decided to read a novel for thirty minutes uninterrupted at least once every day. I had to dig around to find the motivation to do that because I’d fallen out of love with reading (again). I wanted to break the cycle. I wondered (again) if reading was a waste of time. This is a terrible trap for a writer to find himself in. My head was already full of coding, podcasts, films, and catastrophising (of course). Eventually I decided (this took quite a bit of thought!) that reading was something that lifted my whole experience of living, and luxuriating in literature gave me far more felt experiences than I could have in my physical life, so why wouldn’t I drink deeply from the well, as long as it was balanced with being active in the external world?

Today I was asking myself why I kept struggling with sticking to the habits that keep me physically healthy. My right glute flared up at the end of last week, and I struggled walking for an hour on Saturday. I’ve gained weight because I’m emotional eating again. Looking for ways to eat more healthily, I wrote:

… It needs organisation and discipline. Like writing. Like making anything with complexity that’s of worth. Worth. Work. Worth work worthwork wrthwrk

The worth lifts the work. Knowing the reason makes the task more than just an item on a list. Understanding the purpose, feeling the importance of it, makes me engage creatively, and forgetting the reasons why I read led me to stop reading. The same with writing, eating healthily, and exercise.

I can be aggressive in asking why I’m doing something. I talk myself out of all sorts of potentially valuable things. Creative engagement is an elusive mindset. I’m terrible at taking orders, especially from myself, and after one too many compromises, or if I lack clarity of purpose, my unconscious swiftly calls on the gods of mutiny and self-sabotage.

All I can do to find my way through these defences is to keep doing the slow, thorough work of bringing the defences into the light, and as the saying goes, to ‘give them a good listening to’, with kindness and respect. The forces at play deep under the surface of my conscious mind are powerful and can work for me as well as against. The trick is to realise when I’m using ‘the work’ to avoid action. I want to change, but I have to bring my shadows with me, because they are the ones who will make the changed life worth living.

Beautifully crafted, easy to read stories by Alison Moore that are intricate studies in helplessness and despair. The characters find themselves enmeshed in situations that keep getting worse until often they are crushed. The environment shackles them. Language holds them. Revenge arrives, soporifics are deployed, the decay is in all things. They are drawn to that which will damage and destroy them.

The stories are ruthless shadows. They span a decade, most published in magazines, a few published in this book for the first time. Her last collection, The Pre-War House and Other Stories (2013), contained stories written before The Lighthouse (2012), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She’s written four novels since then: He Wants (2014), Death and the Seaside (2016), Missing (2018), and The Retreat (2021). It’s an impressive run. I wonder how the Eastmouth stories fed the novels, and vice versa? I like the pattern of writing short pieces alongside longer ones, then releasing a collection when there are naturally enough stories to fill one. Pretty poison pills. It seems natural. Healthy, even.

In the bookshop I let my eyes drift over bright modern covers and serious-looking classics. I didn’t buy a book. I have books. My problem is I can’t choose one to read. Fiction. Buying a novel is a cheat—it gives the dopamine hit of a decision without requiring the commitment of following it through. I could have bought five books from five different genres that together represented something vital in me, and I would have felt excited, validated, alive even, and they all would have gone on my ever-expanding shelf at home where I wouldn’t read them. This time next week my butterfly soul would have landed somewhere else.

I met my friend Tim for dinner last week. He’s a writer, and I don’t see him enough, even though he’s nearby. As he walked with me back to the train station, I blurted out that we should start a book club, and meet up more regularly to talk about books. The next day I posted a photo of my to-read shelves on social media and tagged him in. He suggested one of three that he’d ordered. I let him choose. The final choice is, at the time of typing, undecided.

It’s a cliché to express the despair and overwhelm at the reality of all culture available all the time. I’ve said it enough myself, but I still haven’t come up with a strategy that works to get me to consistently fucking pick something. Asking Tim to choose a book is another cheat, albeit a lesser one, because at least I will read the book.

Tim said something that hit home. When he feels overwhelmed with family life, say in the summer holidays with his two young children, and he finds a sliver of free time, he gets back to the book he’s reading. That way he can, in his words, maintain a vivid inner life when his external world is at the mercy of others.

When I have ten or twenty minutes spare, I play the golf video game, or browse news online, or open social media apps on my phone, or review my film watchlist, or eat something when I’m not hungry, or make a cup of tea when I’m not thirsty. I NEVER read a book. Those other activities might help me relax, but none of them serve my soul.

The irony is, reading is the ultimate pick up and put down pastime. I see my daughter listen (listen!) to television shows while she makes lunch or does homework. I’ve never been able to multi-task like that. Words don’t go in unless I am giving them my full attention. When I’ve given myself a film challenge, I’ve watched films in thirty minute segments, because that was all the time I had, and it wasn’t as satisfying as watching them in one go. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like television drama series. I need to watch a story in one go if possible, but I can read a book happily in several sittings.

My summer holiday is at the end of August. I’ve been planning on reading more then, when I will have more time, but that’s another cheat. Holidays are not everyday life, and if I’m not reading every week, I’m not suddenly going to start in that week.

I’m currently reading Eastmouth and Other Stories, by Alison Moore. Short stories are perfect for those fifteen minute gaps in the day, and that’s how I’m reading them. After all that reflection, I’d forgotten that I’ve already started moving towards a fresh reading habit. It’s funny what you forget.

I have a Bluesky account. A fellow writer on Twitter sent me an invite — it’s still in a pretty combustible beta — and I immediately feel much more at home there than on Mastodon, which has an awkward user interface and an established culture I don’t chime with. Mastodon is very… conversational. I don’t want to talk with strangers particularly, but I do want smart voices saying interesting things in as few words as possible. Bluesky is like Twitter used to be in that way. It also allows me to control who I read and, with a 300 word limit, encourages me to edit before I post and take pride in what I write.

I’ve been writing software in various guises for over twenty years. I started posting to websites, blogs and social media as soon as I started learning how to code. Sharing thoughts online, as inconsequential, personal, and abstract as they may be, still thrills me, and must be connected to the still-simmering desire I have to see my fiction published.

“To see my fiction published” is a passive statement. I didn’t write ”publish my fiction”. It matters to me that I don’t self-publish. Part of me still wants validation, but I recognise the positives of having a book come out through a publisher, as well as the downsides.

I’m concentrating on my technology career, which pays the bills. I am not passive in that part of my life. I wasn’t passive when I finished The Complex and put it out into the world. This is the phase I am in. The next novel is still in my mind’s eye. It requires a degree of focussed attention that I just don’t have available yet. Anxiety doesn’t help. I am not independently wealthy. This is where I am. The writing phase will come around again. In the meantime I will keep posting here. And now possibly Bluesky.

I’m reading Cinema Speculation, Quentin Tarentino’s non-fiction celebration of key American films of the seventies, from Bullitt and Dirty Harry, to Escape From Alcatraz and The Funhouse. I heard about it through the Pure Cinema podcast, which is connected to Tarentino’s Los Angeles cinema, the New Beverly. The prose voice is exactly how Tarentino sounds in interviews and podcasts. I’m sceptical of his writing ability, and I admit to being cynical about his novel, Once upon a Time in Hollywood, published after the film came out.

Obviously, I’m jealous. I don’t doubt his intelligence or capacity to speak fluently about the stories in his head. It’s easy to imagine him walking around his plush L.A. mansion, talking into his phone, then emailing the recordings to a ghost writer who edits them into shape. And why not? Writing clearly happens in many ways.

It feels like cheating because I have fixed ideas on how writers should write. There has to be suffering, each sentence sweated over, whole chapters thrown away, the entire thing rewritten multiple times. There has to be a crisis of confidence and real risk of the whole thing, perhaps even the writer’s life, collapsing into a meaningless void. That’s real writing.

Yes, that’s fucked up. I don’t know anything about Tarentino’s writing process. He’s an impressive artist and this is all in my head. I’m being a dick, and not to Quentin Tarentino, who couldn’t care less. I’m being a dick to myself. This is how I keep me in my place.

I’ve read three books in the last couple of weeks to do with creative writing: On Writers and Writing, Margaret Atwood; The Writing Life, Annie Dillard; About Writing, Gareth L. Powell. With everything going on in my life, the only way I’m going to write is if I have a clear purpose and a plan. This is always true I suppose, but I’ve seen several plans dissolve in the face of reality, and now I’m wondering if the problem is more in why I write than how I’ll write.

Almost all writers have to work in a job and write in their precious spare time. A few have enough money saved, inherited or earned by well-paid partners to allow them to give their writing full attention—hell a tiny proportion actually survive on income from their writing!—but this is rare. Margaret Atwood points out that as writers, our time is forever split between the imaginary worlds of our stories and the physical world of family, chores, jobs and our health.

On Writers and Writing is full of wisdom. For example, she says writing is a permanent record of our talent (or lack of it), so of course it can be hard to start. Like a musical score, it is brought to life by a reader, and we each have someone inside who we are writing for, whether we know it or not. That could be a memory of a parent figure, a lover, a course tutor, or some version of God.

I realised that for me writing is a spiritual act; it’s an act of nature and an expression of myself. Magazines have editors who accept or reject stories. Creative writing courses have tutors to provide feedback. The publishing game has agents. It’s easy to give these people too much power. Publishing needs gatekeepers, but writers need to own their shit and write for themselves. Writing is a spiritual act, a soulful activity, if done with the correct attention.

Walked to Southside for a coffee. Why? I’m thinking of Gwen Bell, then Neo/Keanu. I deliberately left my notebook at home. I need some time without a pen in my hand. Re-balancing… something. Gwen, Neo and Keanu are seekers of different kinds.

I told myself yesterday to put the writing weight down. There is too much else going on to add the pressure of writing a novel. Life before art. Life is an art, yes, but you get my drift. I’m chaining myself to a rock when I need to be swimming.

Dad’s hoping to come out of hospital this week. He’s always on the back of my mind. And I started a new account in work, before I had completely finished the old one, so I’ve been doing both until today. A mind-stretching exercise and I’m glad it’s over. It’s a short week. I’m looking forward to the Easter break.

Maybe I can put some of this Neo coding energy into a character in the book. (I can’t help myself, but there’s a gap between thought and action.) If I’m stuck in a matrix, what sort is it? Writing? Capitalism? Our budget spreadsheet is a matrix. Reality? (There’s that word again.)

Keanu Reeves is in a relationship with Alexandra Grant, a visual artist, who on her website says her work asks the questions:

How do the languages we speak and the images we see form how we think and exchange ideas? How can artists and writers work to create and influence culture in an increasingly technology-driven world?

This is the tipping point. I’m fifty in two weeks. I’ve watched fifty percent of the 800 films I own, and even less of the books. The amount of time I have left is constricting, but the number of books and films I own keeps expanding. Something has to give.

I need a new philosophy. What I consume (bleurgh) must feed (this is family trauma speaking) whatever I am creating. I envy those who have perhaps always done this. Collecting and list-making is the hoarder’s comfort. Part of me wants to watch and read everything, to learn every language, to play every instrument, but the excess of wanting all this, never mind getting it, is enormously destructive. It’s like over-eating. It’s a form of nihilism. It’s choosing not to choose because I’m afraid of getting it wrong. Instead, I could consciously make a path and accept the consequence—choose an author, a book, that feels related to the novel I’m writing, or pick a film that speaks to something bubbling under the surface that I can’t yet grasp. Maybe it’ll be useful and maybe it won’t, but I’ll have severed my chain to the immovable boulder of infinite possibilities.

Elizabeth Filips, my current YouTube guru-crush, preaches ‘soft discipline’. She means, trust your intuition as to when you do things, and don’t get bogged down in systems and rigid structures. That same knowing-what’s-right works for picking books, tweaking a sentence, choosing clothes in the morning and improvising a meal. It requires being sensitive to how I feel and what I think, and to wonder why I feel and think that now. As a straight man who loves intelligence and empathy in others, Elizabeth Filips is ripe for anima projection. Libido flows through the anima—life force, creative energy, motivation, call it what you will. Intuition is my inner feminine.

Films are a safe way to experience the extremes of life, and books too, probably all art, but in excess they can also be a defence against actually living. It’s time to make some choices. All of my watchlists and TBR shelves make me feel like I have a plan and a project, but this leads to my father’s version of my predicament, which is thirty-eight more years of reading and TV. It’s a decent life, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want it. I can imagine other options.

The photo above was taken this week in the bar at the City Screen cinema, York—I was sitting at the same table almost a year ago when I had the idea to become a creator on Patreon. I love little synchronicities like that. I also love any opportunity to take an anniversary to reflect. I’m pleased with the consistency with which I’ve posted to Patreon, but I feel guilty that I’m not giving enough value for people’s generous support, so I decided to jiggle things around.

There is now an extra, cheaper tier on my Patreon, Strange and Beautiful, for $3/£3 per month. I’d like more patrons in 2023, and to write more for them.

The existing Weird and Wonderful tier remains $5/£5 per month. (Yes, it’s more expensive in pounds now, Patreon adjusted the exchange rates.) This is where the podcast will live, and everything else, including new fiction. Patreon solves the problem of my reticence to publish fiction online. It’s private and paid for, so the ideal place to digitally self-publish pieces that can still go on to become other things.

My plan is to post to Mastodon with my usual daily shizz, to Twitter if something seems to need a wider audience, to this blog for longer reflective pieces, and to Patreon for everything else. People don’t seem to favour websites, even with RSS making a comeback, so it makes sense to cross-post my blog to Patreon. Then patrons can get everything in one place.

As an aside, I’m starting to see the positives of being on Mastodon. It’s a quieter, more civilised space, with lots of interesting people. The statistics are more hidden than on Twitter, so it’s less addictive, and there are fewer voices. I’m hopeful my relationships from Twitter will stay intact somehow no matter what happens. Musk will either kill Twitter or eventually bail.

It does all seem a little complicated, but I’m hopeful and excited to give it a go.

• FILMS IN ALL CAPS (C if in cinema)
• Books, by author, on end date (with start date)

Here’s my list for 2022:

In the spirit of Steven Soderbergh’s media list, SEEN, READ 2022, I decided to pull my own list together, seeing as I had the data in Letterboxd and Goodreads. I’ve tweaked the key of types of media he uses, since I don’t go to the theatre or watch any TV of note:

• FILMS IN ALL CAPS (C if in cinema)
• Books, by author, on end date (with start date)

It was a fun hour reminding myself what I took in last year.

• 03/01: THE SUICIDE SQUAD
• 10/01: THE KID DETECTIVE
• 11/01: SALT
• 15/01: DON’T LOOK UP
• 19/01: Saltwater, Jessica Andrews (16/01)
• 23/01: WRATH OF MAN
• 26/01: SAVE YOURSELVES!
• 29/01: LICORICE PIZZA
• 01/02: DEEP RISING
• 02/02: THE EMPTY MAN
• 04/02: THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN
• 11/02: NOMADLAND
• 13/02: A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler (20/01)
• 16/02: Men, Women and Chain Saws, Carol J. Clover (02/02)
• 17/02: FREAKY
• 18/02: THE FRENCH DISPATCH
• 20/02: A BOY CALLED CHRISTMAS
• 23/02: Diary of a Film, Niven Govinden (10/02)
• 26/02: CLAPBOARD JUNGLE; APPLES
• 28/02: THE SPARKS BROTHERS
• 04/03: Heartburn, Nora Ephron (26/02)
• 07/03: Uncanny Valley, Anna Wiener (26/02)
• 09/03: KATALIN VARGA
• 11/03: CONVOY; I Am Sovereign, Nicola Barker (07/03)
• 12/03: ADVENTURELAND; JOHN WICK
• 19/03: Paperbacks from Hell, Grady Hendrix (13/03); Can’t and Won’t, Lydia Davis (14/03)
• 21/03: Things I Don’t Want to Know, Deborah Levy (21/03)
• 25/03: COLUMBUS
• 26/03: The Cost of Living, Deborah Levy (22/03)
• 27/03: THE BATMAN
• 31/03: THE CAVE
• 01/04: THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE
• 02/04: TITANE
• 09/04: The Answer to Everything, Luke Kennard (06/04)
• 10/04: 9: LIVES OF A WET PUSSYCAT
• 15/04: Real Estate, Deborah Levy (12/04)
• 17/04: Nod, Adrian Barnes (10/04)
• 18/04: THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS
• 23/04: ALLIGATOR; Exercises in Control, Annabel Banks (21/04)
• 24/04: JAWS 3-D
• 25/04: JAWS: THE REVENGE
• 30/04: Dead Relatives, Lucie McKnight Hardy (25/04)
• 01/05: PIRANHA 3D
• 04/05: CROCODILE
• 05/05: Hideous Kinky, Esther Freud (02/05)
• 06/05: CRANK
• 08/05: JAWS
• 09/05: The Time Machine, H.G. Wells (06/05)
• 11/05: THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH
• 13/05: MORVERN CALLAR
• 14/05: INTO THE NIGHT
• 17/05: BLACK CRAB; A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit (14/05)
• 18/05: EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
• 20/05: PALM SPRINGS
• 21/05: THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD
• 28/05: OSLO, AUGUST 31ST
• 30/05: RESIDENT EVIL: WELCOME TO RACCOON CITY
• 03/06: Seafood & Cocktails, Eygló Karlsdóttir (01/06)
• 14/06: THE RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE; REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE
• 15/06: VIDEO NASTIES: MORAL PANIC, CENSORSHIP & VIDEOTAPE
• 16/06: VIDEO NASTIES: DRACONIAN DAYS
• 18/06: DEATH ON THE NILE
• 24/06: A SNAKE OF JUNE
• 25/06: SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME
• 30/06: UNDER SIEGE; Braised Pork, An Yu (28/06)
• 02/07: A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS
• 05/07: RESERVOIR DOGS
• 07/07: DEATH SPA; TRANCERS
• 08/07: BROADCAST SIGNAL INTRUSION
• 09/07: THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER
• 13/07: Material Girls: Why Reality Matters fo Feminism, Kathleen Stock (09/07)
• 14/07: FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE
• 16/07: PULP FICTION
• 18/07: THE RUNNING MAN
• 22/07: THE GRAY MAN
• 23/07: OCEAN’S TWELVE; THE NIGHT HOUSE; Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, James Hollis (21/07)
• 25/07: BULL; The Spirit of Science Fiction, Roberto Bolaño
• 26/07: FOOTPRINTS
• 27/07: DEEP BLUE SEA
• 28/07: All the Dark Places, Eygló Karlsdóttir
• 29/07: DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS
• 31/07: Steering the Craft, Ursula K. Le Guin (30/07)
• 01/08: STOP MAKING SENSE
• 02/08: BLACK BEAR
• 04/08: I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Iain Reid (02/08)
• 05/08: NIGHT TIDE
• 09/08: Climbers, M. John Harrison (04/08)
• 10/08: THE QUIET EARTH; UNDINE
• 11/08: DEAD SET; Demon, Matt Wesolowski (10/08)
• 12/08: LUX ÆTERNA
• 13/08: NOPE
• 16/08: PREY
• 23/08: Juliet, Naked, Nick Hornby (15/08)
• 28/08: THE BOURNE SUPREMACY
• 29/08: THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
• 30/08: RATATOUILLE; A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway (23/08)
• 31/08: JASON BOURNE
• 02/09: THE BOURNE LEGACY
• 03/09: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK; Every Song Ever, Ben Ratliff (15/08)
• 06/09: THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX
• 11/09: NOBODY
• 14/09: EYES WITHOUT A FACE
• 16/09: SECONDS
• 17/09: TARGETS
• 18/09: NIGHT OF THE CREEPS
• 19/09: THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
• 24/09: VIRUS:32
• 25/09: DAVE MADE A MAZE
• 25/09: DON’T HUG ME I’M SCARED
• 26/09: LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH
• 27/09: FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON
• 30/09: Vernon Subutex 1, Virginie Despentes (18/09)
• 01/10: STAR WARS; THE BAY
• 02/10: KILL, BABY… KILL!
• 03/10: SEOUL STATION
• 04/10: CANDYMAN (1992)
• 05/10: CANDYMAN (2021)
• 06/10: HELMUT NEWTON: THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
• 08/10: OFFSEASON
• 13/10: THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS
• 16/10: KING KONG (1933)
• 16/10: THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN
• 17/10: WEREWOLF BY NIGHT
• 18/10: CHOPPING MALL
• 20/10: STAGE FRIGHT
• 25/10: COME TRUE
• 26/10: SPIDER BABY
• 27/10: NEW NIGHTMARE
• 28/10: HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH
• 05/11: ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY
• 07/11: THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT
• 09/11: LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
• 11/11: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (01/11)
• 15/11: THE KINGDOM
• 16/11: REAL LIFE; CLERKS
• 18/11: SPEED
• 19/11: AMBULANCE; Candescent Blooms, Andrew Hook (12/11)
• 26/11: BUGSY MALONE
• 01/12: LOGAN’S RUN
• 02/12: THX 1138
• 11/12: MAD MAX 2
• 15/12: THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
• 19/12: NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION
• 20/12: SPIRITED
• 21/12: Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (05/12)
• 24/12: TOP GUN: MAVERICK
• 25/12: GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY
• 31/12: The Rats, James Herbert (29/12)

Twitter shines at surfacing what I need, when I need it, in this case Elisa Gabbert’s 2022 book list, within which she links to her Paris Review essay, Why Write?

That essay sings to me. Gabbert says that Joan Didion wrote fiction to find out what the pictures in her mind meant, and she give several examples of other famous writers who start their stories with an image, or a dream, and chase it down in words, including Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amis and William Faulkner. It can feel cleansing to get the image onto paper, and the act of writing is often a painful test of endurance.

Jean Rhys only wrote when she was unhappy. George Orwell wrote for the political good. Dorothy Parker was particularly happy when writing, but loathed the business of being a writer. The rewards of writing, meagre as they are, are doled out indiscriminately, and she says no writer deserves anything more than any other.

One passage stood out to me, on the periods of not-writing between longer works:

Tillie Olsen, in her 1965 essay “Silences,” called the not-writing that has to happen sometimes—“what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)”—instead “natural silences,” or “necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation.” Breaks or blocks, times when the author has nothing to say or can only repeat themselves, are the opposite of “the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.” The unnatural silence of writers is suppression of the glimmer. This is Melville who, in Olsen’s words, was “damned by dollars into a Customs House job; to have only weary evenings and Sundays left for writing.” And likewise Hardy, who stopped writing novels after “the Victorian vileness to his Jude the Obscure,” Olsen writes, though he lived another thirty years—thirty years gone, gone as that novel in the apple tree. She quotes a line from his poem “The Missed Train”: “Less and less shrink the visions then vast in me.” And this same fate came to Olsen herself, who wrote what she wrote in “snatches of time” between jobs and motherhood, until “there came a time when this triple life was no longer possible. The fifteen hours of daily realities became too much distraction for the writing.” I read Olsen’s essay during a period in my life when stress from my day job, among other sources, was making it especially difficult to write. I didn’t have the energy to do both jobs well, but I couldn’t choose between them, so I did both badly. Like Olsen, I’d lost “craziness of endurance.”

She concludes that the reason her default state is writing is because it helps her “do better thinking”, and when she’s thinking well, she has more chance of writing…

…that rare, rare sentence or paragraph that feels exactly right, only in the sense that I found the exact right sequence of words and punctuation to express my own thought—the grammar in the thought. That rightness feels so good, like sinking an unlikely shot in pool. The ball is away and apart from you, but you feel it in your body, the knowledge of causation. Never mind luck or skill or free will, you caused that effect—you’re alive!

She writes for the pleasure of solving a puzzle, but a puzzle that only she knows of, and in finding a pleasing solution, finds joy in sensing her own unique spark in the universe.

Read the essay in full at The Paris Review.