The Beginning of the Novel...

Today, finally, I started working on the novel.

I woke up, the light streaming through the tatty floral curtains (Carley assures me that they came with the house and are not of her choosing) and over my makeshift bed. My saving angel herself was at the door, bringing me a cup of steaming coffee. I still have the good fortune of being considered a new and interesting guest, rather than the out-staying-his-welcome interloper, and so I get such little treats.

The house has four people living in it: Carly, of course; Darren, who was at the party a couple of days ago and is an artist like Carly; a guy called James who works in advertising; and a shadowy figure (shadowy because I haven't yet met him) whose nickname is Scout. At least I hope its a nickname. I haven't met him because at the moment he's at home with his parents; taking an extended holiday after the festive period. Apparently his home is a country estate somewhere in Wales - hundreds of acres, so the others tell me; he's a veritable laird.

Anyway, I walked Carly to work at the publishers and then carried on into central London to find somewhere I could sit and think. I bought myself a cup of coffee in a little café near Covent Garden - it was called the Dicken's café, or something similarily inspiring - and spent a good two hours nursing a single cup of coffee (much to the proprieters distaste, I think) and making planning notes in my notebook.

One of my first acts when I got to London - was it really only three or four days ago? it seems like an age - was to buy a proper notebook. It's a black leather moleskine and was the notebook used by both Hemingway and Picasso (I'm picking up literary antedecents everywhere I go). The pages have a smooth finish and the ink pen my father gave me for my sixteenth birthday glides over it smoothly, like a heron skipping on the surface of a pond. It is one of the few objects to which I've grown an attachment that's almost of a sentimental kind. Less because it was my father who gave it to me - I don't really go in for that kind of familial nostalgia - and more because it is one of the few posessions I've managed to keep with me for any length of time. Its a nice pen, but even the nicest things I've owned I have managed to lose, or have been stolen, or left behind. I keep it by me now, a little like a talisman.

Anyway, I've managed to make the first few notes, and the generalities of my novel are taking some kind of form, albeit a slight nebulous one. I don't want it to be realist, I don't think I have the concentration or the will to produce one of those densley plotted historical novels (sorry, Dickens!); I'm not really interested in real people and real problems. I want it to be a novel of ideas, too. Not that I think I have many that are truly unique or earth-shattering, but merely because I find a narrative of ideas more interesting than a narrative of events. In fact, that is how the structure of my novel is going to work: its not going to be based on the events of any given time or follow the life of any given person. Rather its ideas that will lead the action of the novel, rather than the other way round.

I think there's a Thomas Mann novel (maybe its The Holy Sinner) which is narrated by the spirit of story-telling itself. I hope to do something similar; the ethereal movements of thought will be my narrator.

And what's the title of the novel? Surely one of the first question anyone gets asked when they let slip that they're writing one (right after what's it about?) . The answer: I don't know yet. Maybe someone reading this could suggest a title; I'm awful at things like that.

Alright, I had better go. I'm becoming somewhat of a regular at this little internet café off leicester square - I've even started to get a smile from the girl behind the counter. She starts to slice the cheesecake as soon as I arrive. I should stop bowing to the temptation to buy it however; I really must watch my finances.

Enough! I will post again tomorrow.