Stef Is Writing

I’ve done it. I’ve decided on the kind of book I want to write.

Not the genre or period or form or anything actually tangibly useful like that, Lord no. The decision is on the mood.

And the mood is BRAT.

No it isn’t. I’m of an age where, despite having read definitions of what Brat means, I still don’t quite get it. Nor Rizz. ( And yes I realise I have capitalised them for no apparent reason which is quite an old person thing to do as well, like I think they may be proper nouns and not …adjectives?) It’s okay that I don’t know; I don’t mind. It’s either already happened to you or it will at some point. We’re not supposed to know all the words all the time.

In an expert session of peak procrastination, I opened Scrivener and thought about writing. And ‘mood’ seemed to be the most tangential and vaguest focus that I could come up with to pin my thinking on. Chances are if you’re reading this, you’ve read a lot of books. Every year I think about making a list of all the books I read in the year and never commit to it. Monumental zeitgeist beasts that go unfinished, sneaky cheeky thrillers read on a sunbed. Recipe books devoured while eating crisps. As an English teacher, there are a fair amount of books read out of duty. For English Teachers also dislike some of the set texts.

What I was trying to think of was the feeling I got when I first read a book that was exciting, an autonomous choice, words more than pictures (sorry), something read in long sessions on the bed, dry-mouthed from being unable to pull away and even drink water. Or read in short snatches before school, births, marriages.

I do remember such books. And they weren’t monoliths or the classics. They were books that were modest in ambition, maybe a little obscure, a romance, a comedy with some sort of specialist interest, brought home by my dad for ‘review’ for the paper he edited and given to me because I was ‘good at English’. The author picture would be a woman with a heavy fringe and a timid smile, proud that the thing that they had written was out in the world. I would tear through these books over the course of a weekend (not only was I a kid pre-social media, we only had four TV channels for most of my childhood, so weekends could be swamps devoid of entertainment and distraction – which in retrospect, I feel incredibly grateful for.) It felt indulgent, blissful; I felt grown up reading books that had slightly naughty interludes and then incredibly childish for not understanding what these characters were actually doing to each other. And I rooted for the characters. Really rooted. I remember one where the main character always had to have pockets in her dresses and scalding hot baths and I have no idea why these details stuck with me beyond all others but they have. The name of the book, the author and the character has gone, but the baths and the pockets remain.

So I have decided, my book, when I finally move beyond mood and start writing, will not aim for a cover quote from Noam Chomsky. It will not aim to find me sat on a sofa being interviewed by daytime hosts about my bravery or wit. It will not aim for a longlist. It will aim to EXIST and to bring a weirdly particular weekend joy to a subset of readers who don’t have access to Instagram or television for some reason. Or it will aim to be obscure, unread. Either is fine. For books that win awards aren’t always enjoyable to read.

My bookmood, therefore is ….ta-da? Heavy fringe? Weird weekend joy? I don’t know the word quite yet. But I know the mood it inspires.