My Writing Life

Chris lives in and writes about south London.

We all live a collection of interlocking lives, don’t we? Parent, brother, employee, customer. Bloke who comes in for coffee every morning, says hello and leaves. We juggle these lives usually without thinking, but how often do we fully inhabit them all? And how common it is that we find ourselves spending too long in the lives that interest us least? Usually because someone pays us to be there.

I’m no different; I live the same nested portfolio of more and (usually) less interesting lives that you do. They include many years working for the government, inventing and promoting policies I sometimes agree with. And more recently the more enjoyable task of setting up my own business, trying to work only on those policies I support.

And a lot of time spent doing the same kind of domestic stuff that every home and family demands, as well as probably too much time (and money) spent following the fortunes of a relatively unsuccessful English football team. You won’t read much about those things here.

What you’ll get here is a window into the life I have to fight to make space for among everything else. A world where I work harder than anywhere else, because I want to, not because I have to. A place that I can’t claim is limitless in its possibilities, but where no one else places constraints upon me; where the only limits are those I impose myself through the poverty of my imagination and the naivety of my craft. This is about my writing life.

How interesting is that? You’ll have to judge for yourself and maybe we can find out together. No spoilers, no vain promises. I know that I can offer you scary tales of London life and sad tales of people who lose their way and can’t get home again. I can offer you tasty recipes and meditations on popular music, made-up stories of the future and stories from history (some true, some also made-up). There will be free fiction, which I hope you enjoy and which I would love to know your views on. And sometime – probably more often now I’m not working for the government anymore – I can offer thoughts on how the world is and maybe could be.

Let me know what you think.