I have written a book.
There’s really no good way to say that, so I think I’m just going to have to say it again — for my own sake as much as for anything else.
I have written a book. It is written. It is a book. I have written it. The book that I wrote has been written. By me.
You may observe that this statement says something quite big — that I have written a book. And that it also doesn’t say quite a lot of other big things. I have not edited, finished, or published a book. I have not determined if the book is good, or interesting, or even if it makes much sense. I do not know what will happen to my book.
But I have written a book.
It’s hard to know where to begin, so I suppose I’ll have to go back to the beginning. Many years ago, the universe was created (which, as you may have heard, made a lot of people quite mad). Some time after that particular event, I was born, and some time after that, I realised I wanted to write a book.
I suspect it won’t be a surprise to most of my tens of readers to learn that I’ve always wanted to write a book. That desire is, I suspect, a relatively common one. In my case, that wish has waxed and waned and waxed again over the years. But one of the primary aims of this blog has always been to help me reach a point where I am writing consistently and with some skill — and while the latter can always be doubted, the former has at least been achieved. Every year since 2020, I’ve been writing more and more. Every year, I’ve been finding myself more and more motivated to write. And, at last, that motivation has become sufficient to, well, write quite a lot indeed…even if this blog has suffered as a result.
I’ve also always had a folder of ideas, of half-unwritten drafts and pages that peter out into uncertainty. Now that I’ve written one book, I might go back to that folder again. But the genesis of this particular book can really be traced back to relatively recently — to the end of 2023.
That is when the name “Mr Gilson” first appears in my notes. I don’t remember where I was, or what I was doing, when I realised that I wanted to write this book and that I knew what its title would be. However, just over two years ago, there is a single short and entirely incoherent note in my tablet that names Mr Gilson, and that outlines what would one day become a pivotal episode in this book.
In the middle of the note is a fairly spontaneous outburst from me, addressed to me, that reads as follows:
I have to draw this, ****
I try to swear very rarely in speech and in writing alike. My deployment of an expletive is, I think, highly demonstrative of my excitement at the then-nascent idea in that note.
Over the following months, I kept sketching away at that idea. At that name, at that story, at what it all meant. In December, I wrote a blog post on an entirely unrelated subject that (as far as I know) coined an entirely new word — Irreality.
But that wasn’t the first appearance of Irreality in my mind. I borrowed it from myself — from the slowly emerging world of Mr Gilson.
Even so, it was a slow and unpromising process over those months. I was excited about the idea, but I have been excited about book ideas before, to no avail. And I was trying to write bits and pieces, and slowly developing an arc for it, but had many gaps and unanswered questions. It was, in short, entirely uncertain whether this would indeed be the book.
But there were two things working in my favour. One was that I kept on thinking about it. The other was that I was writing more and more, fiction and non-fiction alike…even trying my hand at longer fictional pieces than those that have been published here. I was, in short, practicing (though I didn’t really realise it) what I needed to do to write a book.
Then, in October last year (a year and a week ago, which is rather delightful), I wrote to a friend of mine, with a fairly simple question that I droned on about for far too long. In short, I asked him if he thought I should actually pursue any of this at all.
I had, of course, already determined that I would do so. But his answer was both reassuring and motivating — he is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the best writers that I know, and his enthusiasm at my idea was all that I needed. So, I started writing a book.
I’m not much of one for outlines and structure and fancy things like “planning,” so my methodology was pretty simple. I started at the beginning, and started writing from there. Mind, I did have a few pivotal episodes vaguely outlined, and I always knew where the story was headed. But there were many, many points along the way where I simply had to realise what came next, and was occasionally surprised and horrified and delighted at the answer.
In doing so, I also knew that I urgently needed pressure, some sort of motivation and reason to keep working on the book. I am, fundamentally, a very lazy person. I knew that without that pressure (perceived or otherwise) I simply would not finish the project. That it would taper out sooner or later, becoming just another abortive start at a mildly promising idea.
As such, I set up a small group of friends and family, specifically to test their friendship and make them all sick of me. Each week, I’d send a new chapter of the book to them, and beg them to get cross at me if I did not send it. Across the following 52 weeks, I sent 42 chapters, so as you can see, it sort of almost worked. There were undeniably weeks when I nearly let it go out altogether. But, even through the driest patches, I was still able to do some sort of writing (or at worst, was actively engaged in writing something else, usually for work), which really helped my momentum as well.
I realise that at this point, I have written a lot about writing this book, and very little about the book itself. This is, perhaps, because I do strongly believe that the best way to know anything about the book is to read it, and because I am very bad at describing it — having written it, it is naturally very difficult for me to now rewrite it in a few sentences. But I will attempt it, as (as I’ll return to), it is currently not possible to read the book. As such, my own poor attempt to write what I have written will have to suffice for the moment.
The Marvellous Mr Gilson is a fairytale that pretends to be a murder mystery for a few pages, before half-heartedly abandoning the pretence and fully being about things that I am interested in. One might fairly ask what those things are. Well! It is a story about Faerie, about doubt and determination and wit, about family, about happy endings that aren’t too happy, and about trying to do the right thing. It thinks it is about a man named Mr Gilson, but is really about a young detective who finds herself caught up in the strange world of the titular character, and finds out that she herself is far more concerned with the doings of the fairies than she ever realised.
It is a story about Irreality, and the journeys of mortals to and from that perilous realm. It is a story about the fey, and what it is that distinguishes them from other beings. It is a story about catastrophic mistakes, and about mysteries, and about arrogance and fear and loss and love. It is, of course, a fairy tale.
It is, in short, a story I think I would quite like to have once read. But having not read it, I was forced to take drastic measures and write it myself.
It is currently about 140,000 words long, and I would like it to be shorter. It is 42 chapters long, and that is the perfect amount of chapters for this book.
Now, it is also a story that cannot really be read for now, for several very good reasons. One, while I have finished the story, I have not yet finished working on the story. What currently exists is simply the first draft of the story. It is, to be clear, a draft that I am already mostly happy with…I know it can be refined, but my writing tends to be near the final version from the first. I’m happy with most of the language. I’m happy with the general arc of the story. There will be changes to both, because that is inevitable…but hopefully not so many.
And then? Well, it is then my intention to seek publication. This is, of course, a pretty unreasonable goal, given that I’ve never published anything before. But, well, I want to give it a go. I truly do believe there is something worth pursuing here. I obviously don’t know if it will come to anything, or if it’s at all worthwhile, or if anyone will be terribly interested. But, well…I won’t know until I give it a go, either. I cannot promise that anything at all will come of it. Indeed, from the research I’ve done thus far, it seems exceedingly likely that it will not. But I won’t know until I give it a go.
So, there you have it. That’s what I’ve been doing with my time this year, instead of writing blog posts, or doing sensible things that sensible people do. And that is where the book is at at the moment. If and when there’s any sort of significant update, I’ll obviously write about it here, but I do intend to return to “regular” posts for the foreseeable future.
But I hope there will be something further to announce, sooner or later. I am truly excited about The Marvellous Mr Gilson, and I truly feel that it’s worth my time. And, hopefully? It’ll be worth your time too.
I have written a book. And I feel pretty bloody good about it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for reading – feel free to check out anything else you may be interested in on the blog, there’s plenty more to discover! Follow me on Facebook and on Twitter to stay up to date with The Blog of Mazarbul, and if you want to join in the discussion, write a comment below or send an email. Finally, if you really enjoyed the post above, you can support the blog via Paypal, and keep The Blog of Mazarbul running. Thanks for reading, and may your beards never grow thin!