The Book I've Yet To Write
My last meeting of this afternoon was with Ken Lindsay, who produces most of the trails you hear on Radio Scotland. We meet monthly to go through the highlights for the coming weeks and talk about how we want to trail them. It's a bit like producing radio commercials. The idea is to keep listeners informed about new programmes, without having so many trails that they becomes an irritation.
Among next month's highlights is a project designed to help anyone who has ever wanted to write a book, but didn't know where to start. It's called ...although I admit the word-play in that title doesn't work very well on radio.
Personally, I have three unfinished books on the go. I began writing Don't Forget To Smile when I was eighteen. The Orwellian plot centries on a future society where no one can admit to being sad.
I completed 50,000 words of The Hollywood Haircut, as part of three years ago. It was a mid-life crisis story about a man whose life is transformed because of a romance in Los Angeles
My latest epic is entitled The Fast Life and is about a teenager who falls in an out of a coma, waking for two or three weeks every few years. So every time he awakes, the world has moved on, although he feels he's just had an overnight sleep.
I always mean to complete one or other of these potential masterpieces in the summer or Christmas holidays, but, well, you know...
Write Here, Right Now will run in the Radio Cafe and other programmes during February.