Taking an unusual path to becoming an author
In the depths of the Covid pandemic, as normal life was replaced by normal lockdown, when the highlight of any day was the one allowable trip out of the house for exercise, I would open the front door and amble up to the local fields and hilltop woods, for pure escape.
In air that was fresher than usual due to the absence of industry and suburban traffic, and with far-reaching views across a subdued landscape, I would let my feet and mind wander, enjoying the limited time available outside of the house, away from talk and worries of coronavirus, away from talk on Zoom and Teams.
I would be accompanied on these daily walks by my new acquaintance, a pandemic puppy, a source of joy in an increasingly joyless world, and an unforeseen and unlikely source of inspiration for a new interest that began to emerge during the pandemic. This new pursuit was writing a book.
A few initial words became a paragraph, the paragraphs became a page, and one page surprisingly became the first of several more. The narrative began to take the shape of a slightly surreal self-help guide. A guide to ‘greatness’, whatever the concept of greatness might mean. But strangely, they were not my words. Weirdly, they were the words of my dog.
I do not mean of course that my dog was talking to me but I began to see the world through a dog’s eyes and mind. I think the pandemic was getting to me a little and this was my escape. I would imagine the main character’s deluded daydreams, placing them within the unlikely structure of a business self-improvement book, a genre I had always shuddered at reading. A professional cartoonist friend added his pictures of the cast of canine companions. The book was coming together.
What emerged was ‘Making very difficult things easy to do’, a parody of a self-help guide, written by the ‘world’s highest achieving dog’. As the blurb says: ‘You may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks; but a younger dog may be about to teach you new life skills… Work your way through this self-help guide and discover for yourself the power of assuming things will be easier than they are in a journey of the absurd.’
The book blurb then concludes: ‘These could be some of the most enlightening, poignant and ridiculous words ever written by a furry household pet.’ Life coaching and business advice from a cockapoo? It is probably not a crowded market.
Writing the book made me smile. When published by The Book Guild in May 2022, I really hope it might make others smile. It feels to be a very unusual book, maybe an unusual book for unusual times. A time of our life when something irreverent should be welcome.
