My First Book

I am somewhat of an anomaly within the writing community, in that I don’t read novels. I’ve never really managed to grasp the whole ‘reading for enjoyment’ thing. Even if I’d got a chapter in and wanted to know what happened next, I’d always prefer that somebody just told me to save me the hard yards.

I see posts on Twitter from writers appalled by this sort of behaviour. “What do you mean, you don’t read? What do you do then?” I think it’s pretty judgmental and it does annoy me a little. Why can’t I be a successful novelist without reading? I spend so much time on my own novel so why the hell would I want to invest so much time in someone else’s? I have a relationship to manage, a full-time job, music to listen to, Sid Meier’s Civilization 6 to play, and once Covid-19 blows over, maybe even some places to go.

Over the last year that I’ve been writing, I have tried to justify my stance on not reading even more, launching a curious defence of my position. I think that, in some regards, not reading and not having any sort of formally learned knowledge of literary concepts and structure could actually be my USP. There might be something refreshing as a reader to see a writer who is raw and unbound by convention; someone who isn’t trying too hard to make a story read like the textbooks say it should; someone who wrote their novel their way.

I still think there’s a scintilla of sense to that approach. However, over the weekend, I decided for maybe the ninth or tenth time in my adult life to give a book a go. I think I last tried it on holiday in Montenegro. My girlfriend had taken some books with her and recommended The Girl on the Train. I tried to get into it, but it just felt like work rather than relaxation, and holidays are about relaxation. I packed it in after three chapters, lay back on the sun lounger and stuck my headphones. of Montreal had not long released Innocence Reaches. I elected to listen to that on repeat instead.

I did watch the movie of The Girl on the Train upon my return to Scotland. It was very good.

Since I’m writing thrillers, I asked my partner if she had any thrillers. She handed me one by Linwood Barclay. I started reading and instantly found myself relating to one of the characters. The plot is about a guy who has some psychological issues. He believes that some sort of catastrophic incident will occur and that all electronic maps will be lost due to some computer glitch or virus. He takes it upon himself to try and remember the street layout of every city on the globe. He has it in his head that the CIA have recruited him to do this. He spends pretty much all of his waking hours doing this and doesn’t leave the house.

This didn’t just resonate with me because it describes me perfectly when playing Civilization 6, which is the perfect ‘just one more turn’ game; before you know it it’s 4am and you’re up at 7 for work. How can you even contemplate going to bed when you’ve got a war to finish with the Aztecs and the Hanging Gardens will be built soon?

It struck a chord with me because I was, admittedly, an unusual child. I don’t know what normal children did but I assume it some combination of activities like football, hide and seek, hopscotch and skipping. Instead, I stayed indoors at the dinner table with some felt tip pens and a giant fold out street map of my hometown. I colour coded the districts and I tried to learn every street. I also had an obsession with lamp posts, not in the way dogs do though. I just remembered the numbers printed on them. I guess most people didn’t even know they have unique numbers printed on them. You do now.

My mum tells a story that I don’t remember anything about, but I have no reason to doubt the veracity of it. I was about 5 or 6 years old and we were walking through my neighbourhood and man stopped my mum to ask where some street was. She hadn’t heard of it and apologised saying that she couldn’t help the man. That was when I interjected and told him exactly how to get there. A left down Watson Street, then right onto Flinders, then Iona Avenue, then you’ll come to lamppost number 73721 and you’ll see a lane backing onto some lock-ups. Take that and go left when you come out the other side. He looked at me like I’d just soiled myself and smeared the excrement across my face like war-paint. In fact, I think that would be a more likely thing to witness a five-year old do rather than be a human satnav.

My mum just said, ‘Those will be the correct directions. Just trust the boy.’

I’m sure that man made it to wherever it was he going. Anyway, I think that similarity with the character has given me a way into this book, and I’m hoping that will now ignite an interest in reading for enjoyment in general. I fully intend to make this the first book I’ve read cover-to-cover since I was pretty much made to read ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ in secondary school.

I’m enjoying it so far, and hopefully there are new lessons to be found in reading to be applied to my own writing