PDIPPING MY TOE IN THE WATER

I have become a novelist; “Ground” is published, my very first attempt at fiction. Nothing surprising in that, you might think; many are called, and few are chosen. And when I first started writing, the general opinion was entirely negative; all the evidence was that those who start never finish. If they do, it will be rubbish. No-one will publish it. You must write a million words before you write anything worth reading. Agony aunts in the writing and publishing world certainly pile on the agony.
So, I thought it might be worth reflecting on my passage. I am a writer of necessity, because as a scientist I have published more than a hundred academic papers. More to the point, I had written a non-fiction book (all 500 pages of it) for the interested public: “Slugs and Snails” in 2016. At least, therefore, I should be able to cope with demands of spelling and grammar. All this does not amount to a million words, still less words of fiction.
But I had an idea, an idea that lingered in my mind. At least ten years ago, I and my family were walking in Bradfield, a small village not far from Sheffield. It was an atmospheric, hazy day. To the west were the high moors of the Pennines, looming and darkened. To the east, in the distance, the flat plains stretching past Doncaster to the North Sea. It struck me that I was on what I immediately thought of as the Middle Ground (and yes, those capital letters were there). What, in another era, might lie on either side?
Now, this is where it gets a bit tricky, for those words “Middle Ground” triggered the memory of Tolkien’s “Middle Earth”. A wicked thought occurred: what if the fair of features, the near eternal, were the evil ones, and the misshapen, sickly and mortal were the good guys. Fear not, what emerged was no counterblast to Lord of the Rings. There is no magic, no self-conscious beings other than us humans.
The idea sat still. Then there was the pandemic. I started writing. It was totally absorbing. I am what is known as a pantser; there was no detailed plan. I was three-quarters through before I envisioned the ending. People complain of writer’s block, but I had the opposite problem, writer’s trots, and the interminable struggle to retain coherence and timing. And there is interlacement, the telling of stories in different places at the same time. The problem of logistics and timing: how can you make a hot air balloon with locally available materials? How long would it take to get from Chapel-en-le-Frith on horseback or on foot? How much might sea level have risen 280 years from now?
Now I have the bug. Given that I am 79, I need to get on with it. In the meantime, I hope to write about other books and authors, and especially around that key question: what if?..

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