What I needed to hear
I have been a slow reader for a few years now. It's just life that gets in the way, isn't it. I would sit down with a book, and within 5 minutes I need to go to the bathroom, then notice I hadn't finished doing my dishes, the cat wants to crawl on my tummy. I'm lucky if I'm reading an e-book when the cat comes, there's at least some chance of multitasking. If it's a print edition - no way. And I was struggling, it felt like I was missing out on reading.
But then I thought, I'd give audiobooks a go. I had noticed it was mentioned more and more in the media and socials. And I really wanted to read Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club.
I had tried audiobooks a long time ago and had found that I drift off in my own thoughts and then I can't even remember where I left off. But this time, I guess for a good audiobook two factors have to be good - the story and the narrator. If one is missing, we're back to the drifting off.
The Thursday Murder Club is narrated by Lesley Manville. She is perfect for this book. She embodies the characters so well, giving them all the layers and tones. Instead of drifting off in my thoughts, I find myself listening to the book whilst doing my dishes, and in my head I'm walking with Joyce through a Kent village. Or sitting in a room with Elizabeth, eating cake and drinking tea. It does help, I think, that I also have been to Kent, and I have actually lived for a very short time, but still, in a small English village. I know the situation with the buses and I remember the high street shop settings.
I hadn't expected to giggle so much in a murder book, and feel so uplifted by the twists and turns wherever they took the characters. The realistic relationships and the tenderness that embodies the understanding of tragedies and the reactions to those. I didn't expect to have a little laugh or to get sympathetically sad whilst sitting on a tram with my headphones on whilst the characters are going through a new discovery of events.
And then came the biggest surprise of them all! The audiobook has a little interview with Richard Osman at the end of it. He talks about the inspirations for characters, admits to some form of his own life in them. He talks about himself as a reader and says things about not believing in good writing from people who don't read. The way he speaks about his characters, it's so endearing and so real. And somewhere in that interview it struck me.
I always have been a poet. Since I was a teenager. A poet who writes poems, some based on my life, some based on observations, some inspired by politics or current events.
But I have always carried a prose story inside me. For at least 10 years now, maybe more. Every time I had tried to write it, it had turned out just total shit, and I'd leave it be for another few years. But listening to the open and enthusiastic way that Osman talks about his characters, how they almost help him write his books, I realised that I had been going on about my story the wrong way around. I had been trying to write about the characters in my head, not writing the characters that live in my head on paper. Listening to what they say and how they feel. What would they do. How would they react. And I knew that is what I needed to do as well. If I get stuck, I'd just ask one of my characters to explain it. My first draft is slowly, but coming together. As Terry Pratchett had said: "The first draft is you telling the story to yourself", and I am finally ready to listen.
(Yes, I know, I know, this is not the Book3 Project that I've been hyping lately. But as the Book3 Project is mostly written already, it's going through the finding the design, the building of its own website, all the magical things that my designer does to make it real, I have some time on my hands to immerse in new writing.)
So, be brave and give Richard Osman's book a chance!
And keep an eye out for the new and amazingly different Book3 Project coming to all your screens soon enough.