I’m a solicitor. Right, that’s the boring bit out of the way. Let’s get to the interesting stuff.
It’s taken a long time to get here – over two years. Why write a book in the first place? I suppose like a lot of people, lockdown got me thinking about what could have been, and for me, that meant writing. What if I wrote a book? That was the easy part. The hard part was knowing what to write about.
My eldest son Dylan has autism. For him, autism means he finds it difficult to concentrate and communicate. He doesn’t like loud noises and he likes his routine. Part of that routine means bedtime stories. He loves them. He loves picture books in particular. You name one, he’s got it and I’ve read it to him.
One day, he was sitting at the kitchen table drawing. Dylan loves to write and draw. It’s his thing. He drew a picture of a dinosaur. Well, not a dinosaur exactly, because it was pink and had an arrowhead for a tail, but nevertheless, it had the appearance of a dinosaur. He named it the Rainforestness Monster. Why? He couldn’t say. Where did the inspiration for the picture come from? He couldn’t say.
What I do know is that picture set off the kernel of an idea in my mind – an unknown and unexplained creature trying to find its place in the world. From there, the initial outline of the story formed pretty quickly in my mind, and within a week, I had written the first few pages. That was the easy part!
Writer’s block hit, and is was another few months before I returned to the manuscript. From my own experience, I found that if you arrive at a place where you cannot think what to write next, it’s best to walk away, close the laptop and return another time. You cannot force it.
I completed the story over the course of another couple of weeks, read it through, re-read-it, tweaked it, and sent it to some people who I know and trust to review and critique it. The most important thing I learned was that people liked it.
Having finalised the story by mid- 2020, it took me until early 2021 before the project progressed any further, and a further 12 months to arrive where we are now.
I will detail the trials and tribulations of how I have managed to end up where we are now another time, but save to say it wasn’t straightforward. The Rainforestness Monster is published later this month. I can scarcely believe it.