Making sense of writing scraps
And other procrastination techniques
I have a file containing 20 years of half-formed fiction ideas, fragments of out of context dialogue, unanchored titles and character names. Every time I dip in to find something to work on, I spend an hour marvelling at how good some of it is, how long ago most of it was, and then have to pack in as I've run out of writing time. That’s my latest excuse for not getting much writing done, anyway.
I’ve been a little directionless so far this year; regular readers will know I called it a day on my podcast sitcom after episode 11 last August, when my mother went into hospital — too many other things going on for me to give it the time and headspace it required. I finished the rewrite of my comedic 1920s-set novel Hebburn and the Follies of Youth in late November, the week before she died. Since then it’s taken me a while to get back into a regular writing habit (including these missives, for which I apologise. Unless you’re enjoying the reprieve, in which case you’re welcome). I thought some of you might be interested in what I have been writing.
Since Christmas I’ve written a chunk of the Hebburn1 sequel, tentatively called Hebburn and a Spot of Fishy Business, which I was at least entertaining myself with. However, it did occur to me that I don’t quite know what to do with the first book, let alone a second. A couple of years ago, before the rewrite, I had started touting …Follies of Youth around agents and approachable publishers, and the only response I got2 was: ‘We thought that your sample chapters were really well written and very funny. However, we didn’t feel the pitch was quite commercial enough’. The rewrite has made me happier with the plot but won’t have done anything for its commercial prospects.
Consequently I wanted to work on some short fiction that I could potentially send to a magazine or anthology, or enter into a competition. I did of course write and send to you a Postcard from Upper Wheatley, a short return to the world of my sitcom Lee-Ann’s Spare Fridays, but that wasn’t a standalone piece and wouldn't make sense to anyone who hasn't listened to the sitcom (it was adapted from the unfinished script for episode 12 in fact).
Looking through my folder of unfinished stories I hit upon the one currently known as Returning Drummer, which I’d last saved in 2022. It began life in an Ilkley Writers session in February 2016, when another member of the group set the rest of us an exercise to write some notes and then start a story which was about leaving home or coming home. Who, where, why, when, and who else is present? Another character arrives or phones, or a letter from them arrives — what does it precipitate?
Now you might think that a half-formed idea from 9 years earlier which I hadn’t even touched for nearly 3 years, should just be abandoned. In some cases that would be true, but there’s something about this story that I keep thinking about, that I want to get right. I chose to set it in a half-remembered version of Trillians Rock Bar in Newcastle upon Tyne, where I spent a great deal of time drinking snakebite in the late nineties. The returning drummer of the holding title is there on a nostalgia trip, since he’s in the area for work, when in walks his erstwhile friend who he hasn’t spoken to for 15 years.
I remember, at that Ilkley Writers meeting in 2016, talking about differences in memory. ‘Wasn’t it great when we used to do X?’ bringing a negative response or a ‘you must be thinking of someone else’, not the assumed agreement that the phrasing expects. One friend thinking you just lost touch, the other nursing a decades-long grievance. I also had things I wanted to say about identity — in the late nineties my band T-shirts, biker jacket and black nail varnish badged me as part of a crowd, but in 2016 I’d recently suffered the back injury that made my biker jacket too heavy for general wear and I was probably sorting out what that meant for who I saw myself as.
Last month I finally figured out exactly what it was that had happened 15 years earlier between the two men, and how to work that into the narrative. I haven’t quite sussed the ending yet but I’m nearly there. Of course the intervening time since I began this story has given me another problem.
In February 2016, it was nearly 16 years since I graduated from Newcastle University so ‘15 years ago’ in the story fell in reasonably familiar territory and I was comfortable with describing their lives and activities as final-year undergraduates at that time. I also knew or could easily imagine what it would be like to run into someone 15 years on, and how we might have changed in the meantime. Now, however, it would be 24 years on — is that too big a gap for certain memories to linger, grievances to be nursed, a man’s ponytail to remain thick and brown? But if I keep it at 15 years, we’re in unknown territory when they finished university, in 2010 where mobile phones were ubiquitous and Facebook existed. Where I don’t know how longhairs behaved, and probably nobody still wore Motley Crue T-shirts3.
Possibly the answer is to have a reference to the year in the title. There was a vogue for flash fiction titles like ‘One Tuesday afternoon in September 2016’ a while ago, so I could play around with something like that (though this story is much longer than flash). Once I’m happy with the title I’ll finally have a new short story to send out, not to mention possibly the final story in the music-themed collection I keep talking about putting together. And then, you never know, I might even be ready to start a new story entirely from scratch.
When I started writing about Archibald Hebburn in 2018 I was completely unaware of the brilliantly funny BBC sitcom Hebburn from 2012, not having had a TV since 2001. Archie is a fictional aristocrat who is, like the sitcom, named after the place in north-east England.
Those of you who aren’t writers will no doubt be surprised to learn that it is customary to send a manuscript to an agent or publisher, or a story to a magazine, and receive no reply whatsoever. After a certain lapse of time you assume they don’t want it, and send it elsewhere. This is an inefficient system, to say the least.
Unless they’d had one of their revivals then? I lose track.