Let me not entertain you

I have been toying with the idea of writing a serious book for a long time—I have quite a lot of it already written. Then this morning, I had an idea. Now though, fully dressed, trapped in the busiest part of the country and a decided distance from any foliage, in the cold harsh pre-autumn light, I’m undecided.

My idea is to turn this serious novel idea—which I’ve always envisaged weighing it at least 500 pages, and fine-tuning until worthy of a proper publisher—into a short novella about a man who turns into a tree.

The cause of this sudden whimsy: bookshops. Working in the West End—there are hundreds of the things, all stacked with piles of books; thousands of authors; hundreds of thousands of characters; millions of chapters; billions of words.

I met--a while ago--somebody who had read one of my stories, wasn’t previously known to me in any capacity and was not a writer. It was okay, but it made me realise, I’m not writing to be read. Not writing to be a skinny or fat spine on that weighted shelf on Oxford Street.

I think the reason I like to write is the reason people like to do crosswords, or meditate, or play music. I’ve nothing to say to anyone else. I’m not a preachy person. I don’t like people relying on my opinion. I’m naturally quite gregarious, but am ultimately interested in my own privacy.

I’m already an individual among billions of others—I don’t need a book of mine to be the same. I write stories to entertain me. Not you.