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The writer I would have liked to be
Aug. 8th, 2005 01:51 pmI shall now hymn the manifold virtues of Jasper Fforde.
I like to fiddle around with the concepts of story in my writing. Many of my characters know they’re fictional, and some have crossed storylines so often there ought to be some equivalent of Air Miles for them. A while ago I played with the idea of a novel in which characters crossed from one story to another, and I thought I was jolly clever, but as usual I ran out of steam and it remains unfinished. Meanwhile, Jasper Fforde was doing it. And not just with made-up books and characters like pusillanimous me, oh no. He was doing it with Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens and frodding Shakespeare. And not only did he finish the book, he sent it around to publishers, and after seventy-six rejections, he got it published, and it’s better than anything I could have done with the idea. As are the four books with which he followed it, of which the latest, “The Big Over Easy,” is the best yet.
This is why I will never be a published writer. I like to think that one of these days I might, you know, but I would never have stuck it out through seventy-six tries and kept going. Never. I’ll always write. I can’t stop that. But there really is no point me trying to pretend that after fifty years I’m suddenly going to develop the stickability I’ve lacked up to now. But it doesn’t matter, because there’s Jasper Fforde, and he’s bloody brilliant. I don’t know if he was ever in the running for a Hugo, but he should have been, and if I had my druthers he would have won.
So, my friends, if you haven’t tried Jasper Fforde, please do so, and reflect as you do that you are reading the writer that I would have liked to be.
I like to fiddle around with the concepts of story in my writing. Many of my characters know they’re fictional, and some have crossed storylines so often there ought to be some equivalent of Air Miles for them. A while ago I played with the idea of a novel in which characters crossed from one story to another, and I thought I was jolly clever, but as usual I ran out of steam and it remains unfinished. Meanwhile, Jasper Fforde was doing it. And not just with made-up books and characters like pusillanimous me, oh no. He was doing it with Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens and frodding Shakespeare. And not only did he finish the book, he sent it around to publishers, and after seventy-six rejections, he got it published, and it’s better than anything I could have done with the idea. As are the four books with which he followed it, of which the latest, “The Big Over Easy,” is the best yet.
This is why I will never be a published writer. I like to think that one of these days I might, you know, but I would never have stuck it out through seventy-six tries and kept going. Never. I’ll always write. I can’t stop that. But there really is no point me trying to pretend that after fifty years I’m suddenly going to develop the stickability I’ve lacked up to now. But it doesn’t matter, because there’s Jasper Fforde, and he’s bloody brilliant. I don’t know if he was ever in the running for a Hugo, but he should have been, and if I had my druthers he would have won.
So, my friends, if you haven’t tried Jasper Fforde, please do so, and reflect as you do that you are reading the writer that I would have liked to be.
