Why I Read
As a young boy I was insular and liked a quiet space. I had
friends and played sports, especially in the summer months, but the worlds of
the imagination seemed so much richer and colourful than the real world I lived
in. We had a small house with two downstairs rooms, with two bedrooms and a
bathroom upstairs. As one of the
downstairs rooms was the ‘front room’, it was rarely used except when we had
visitors. So usually, there was no
getting away from people – that is, the other people in my family: mum, dad,
younger brother. We’d be squeezed into
the back room with the kitchen sink, the pantry, the kitchen table and the
television.
And the armchair I sat in to read.
From the age of about four, I read everything I could lay my
hands on – well, everything I could understand. I have vague memories of Janet
and John books being read to me by my mother. And after that I remember the Arabian Nights
(read under the bedclothes while it was still light outside) and being given a
copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel for Christmas.
Then came the comics: Hotspur, the Hornet, the Beano. And
American ones too, with glossy covers – Superman and Batman, naturally, and the
characters with different super-powers: Green Hornet, Flash, Atom,The Justice
League of America. Marvel comics were dark even then – Daredevil, Iron Man, the
Hulk ... and often they left you disappointed because you had to buy the next
issue to find out what happened next.
And this led to a teenage fascination with science-fiction.
Finding
Dune in my school library at the age of sixteen was probably the
greatest single reading highlight of my teenage years. Suddenly reading wasn’t
just about action and adventure (thanks, Biggles) but was about depth –
introspection, subtlety, relationships. Next stop, The Grapes of Wrath, The
Great Gatsby, Catch-22.
What strikes me is that I read for almost exactly the same
reasons now as I did then. I want a hero who is strong but understands how other
people think; I want a story I can believe in but is full of surprises; I want
to smile or laugh at regular intervals; I want an ending that wraps everything
up but is poignant; I want to enter a world I know little about but am
fascinated by. It’s not about escapism – it’s about seeing reality from another
angle so that it makes more sense. Imaginary worlds are not completely separate
from the one we live in – they offer hope and can act as aspirations. I read
now to recapture that hopefulness of youth, still believing that everything will
turn out fine once the hero has overcome his or her struggle.
Why I write
Writers often say that they write because they have to – there’s
a kind of internal pressure that they can’t resist to get words on paper.
I understand that pressure. I went almost twenty years
without writing anything for myself. I wrote every day for the various jobs
that I had, but nothing ‘made up’ for my own enjoyment. And then I couldn’t
resist the pressure any longer and started writing my Sam Dyke series of books.
If you’ve ever tried to write fiction and given up, you’ll
know it’s not something that always comes easy. But if you’ve got the bug, you’ll
also know that there’s immense pleasure from writing a scene that’s full of
suspense, humour, drama and conflict. For a short while, you have a grasp on
how people think, how they talk, what’s important to them and what they want.
And – however briefly – you’ve got the technical ability to put into words all the
subtlety and nuance that are in your head.
That’s why I write – to prove to myself that I can do
something that most of the time I don’t believe I can.
Like a good fictional character, I’m succeeding against the
odds and creating the world afresh.
