I’m not really a grown up.

There. I’ve said it. It’s all out in the open.

Just to qualify a few things. I suppose I look like a grown up. If you happened to know my age (a well kept secret) you might think I should be a grown up. I even manage to do a bunch of things you would usually think could only be done by grown ups, such as having a job, owning a house, and fathering a couple of children.

But it doesn’t change the fact that when it comes down to it, I’m not really a grown up. I’m a big kid, walking around in a grown up world. The thoughts going around in my head are kid’s thoughts. The things I like – the food I eat and the music I listen to and the movies and TV shows I watch – are pretty much the same ones I liked when my age matched my maturity. And that goes especially double for the stories I like to write.

You might think it must be difficult going through life as a fully grown child – and you’d be right. Every day I live in constant fear that I’ll be discovered. Every time I show up to work, I’m worried that my colleagues will finally see through my disguises. Every time I speak to my kids, I just know that they’re going to trump my childlike logic and arguments. It’s a constant mask I wear every day that I always feel is about to slide down, leaving the genuine childlike me revealed for all the world to see.

So now that you’ve heard my confession, please don’t let on. Keep it to yourself. It can be our little secret. 

At times like these, I feel like sitting down, pulling right back on the silly, and having a good old reflect on the year so far, and particularly where I am with my writing goals.

It’s been a busy one. With the multiple projects (and their multiple deadlines) at work, and everything that goes with family life, sometimes I think it’s a wonder I get anything done on the writing front at all. And yet, amazingly, I’ve actually managed to reach a point where I’m quite advanced as far as those goals go.

At the start of the year, I gave myself two primary goals:

1. Complete and publish my third Neville Lansdowne story
2. Complete a full rewrite of the detective story I originally wrote a first draft of many years ago.

So where exactly are we at?

It’s always struck me as a bit too sycophantic – while I like to admire people, there’s a sense of putting them up a bit too high on a pedestal. Maybe even something a bit desperate or fetishistic.

Of course, like all of of my hard and fast rules, I’m happy to make exceptions.

I do have two autographed items that I maintain with love (if maybe not as much care as they deserve).

One is my autographed Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. Given that Douglas Adams is one of my major inspirations, it feels kind of cool to have just that little piece of him, especially as he’s sadly no longer with us. The book is rather ragged and falling apart these days, but I’ll never get rid of it.

The other is my autographed Mad Magazine. Mad was a massive inspiration to me as a kid – it really gave me a sense of the big world and how there was so much that could be made fun of, as well as the idea of satire as a powerful mechanism for humour. I loved how it covered a really broad range of styles, from sharp political satire to just completely random and oddball (like the wonderful cartoons of Don Martin).

It was kind of a special thing when I was being taken around New York by a cousin and happened to pass right outside their offices. Of course, I dragged the somewhat nonplussed cousin inside, where I got to meet the editor, William Gaines. He was very cheerful and friendly, happily giving me a free copy of an edition that had been damaged in the post and signing it on the spot.

As a writer myself, I haven’t done a lot of autographing. I guess I’m not quite in the Douglas Adams league. And besides, most of my books are ebooks, and while I know there are electronic ways to do autographs, it doesn’t quite feel the same. But I do have a few children’s books in print, and I have done a bit of autographing for them – one was for the child of a friend who was most upset to see their book had been scribbled on.

And that’s the big problem I’m likely to face if I should ever get famous enough for people to want my autograph. I don’t have a decent signature. My handwriting is completely disgusting. If I ever get that popular, I suspect I’d need a handwriting double.

Here’s hoping.

I can understand why. You get your reader hooked and then they’ll keep coming back, wanting to know exactly what happens next. You get them to build up a strong relationship with your characters, so they’ll really care about what happens to them. It makes complete sense.

I’m just not quite sure if I can do it.

There’s a couple of problems.

The first is that I have a really short attention span. By the time I’m halfway through something, my mind is already moving on to something new. I can barely keep the focus to work on one individual book, let alone a major project that involves three or more books.

The other problem relates to the way I develop my stories. As I’ve mentioned before, I call myself a plontser – which is something halfway between a plotter and a pantser. I usually have a broad idea about where my story is going, but I’m constantly filling in the details and making up a lot of stuff as I go.

This means that, especially with first drafts, I change my mind a lot as I go. If you read any of my first drafts, you’ll see how things change, maybe even characters and their names change, from chapter to chapter. It’s something that I gradually tidy up during the rewriting process.

But imagine if I did this with a story that spanned multiple books. Halfway through book three, I’d realise that there were a bunch of things wrong with book one that I’d want to change. Only problem is, by this time book one is most likely done and dusted.

Clearly, the only way I could manage this process was if I didn’t release any books until the whole series was done. This would mean constant re-editing of all books. I’m not sure I could handle that.

Having said that, I am having a go at a series of a sort. Once I get my third Neville Lansdowne story out (tentatively titled Scrawling), I’ll have three volumes of Neville. I suppose it’s kind of a series, even though each story basically stands on its own. I’m not sure if there’s some sort of a rule I’m breaking there as far as series definition goes – and I don’t really care anyway.

So I’m continuing to churn ahead with Neville’s new adventures – and I’m not looking back at his old ones. We’ll see where he takes me next.