I have been doing a spot of reading.

Those of you who haven’t been around here that long may not know that I was once approached to write a book.  It was back in the glory days when this site won an award or three [*cough*] and there had been mentions in various papers.  Glory days indeed!  How things have gone downhill since then……

Anyhows I contracted to write a book, and so I sat down and started typing. 

To cut a very long story short, my long story never saw the light of day.  I had sent extracts to the publishers and they were happy, but I wasn’t.  The book was crap and I pulled it.  The final published book ended up as a series of extracts from this site, and didn’t exactly hit the best sellers lists, though there are still a few copies lying around in libraries and second hand bookshops, or so I am led to believe.

Since then, I have toyed with writing a proper book, but every time I start I get bogged down.  I have about ten false starts under the belt at this stage, each one running to a few thousand words, but each one fizzles out into an empty story line.  A while ago I made a firm promise to myself to forget the idea altogether, but inevitably I get the bug again and the idea starts niggling once more.

I was messing around this morning looking through some old files.  I found The Book!  It was the [almost] full version that I had pulled from the publisher, and I thought I had lost it, seeing as it was written about nine years ago.  I started reading it.

It’s not quite as bad as I remembered.  I’m glad it wasn’t published though as there are many characters in it who would instantly recognise themselves and not in a very favourable light.  Litigation would probably have become the norm.

It’s strange feeling, reading a story that I wrote as I had completely forgotten what I had written so basically it’s like reading a book by a [very] strange author.

So now I am toying with the idea of resurrecting it and finishing it off.  Major sections would have to be rewritten to protect the innocent and the guilty but it’s still easier than starting with a blank screen.

I’m not that pushed at all about getting it printed, and would probably find it almost impossible to find a publisher anyway.  That’s not the point.  The point is to get to a stage where I have written the fucking thing and am reasonably happy with the result.  At east then I could draw a line under the whole idea.

Something else crossed off the bucket list.

Actually, I think it’s the only thing on my bucket list.