Robert Garnham

I live for literature - which sounds somewhat high-minded (which it isn't) - but it is a pretty fair description of my life. I spend about four hours a day reading and writing, in spite of the fact that I work full time and study.

My interest is literary fiction - I write for myself, it is true, but I recognise that the act of writing involves the reader, too - and for this reason I try to accomodate the reader's experience into what I work on.

i should consider exactly why it is that i write.

on a basic level this activity fulfils two functions : to fill the page with words, (which is decorative), and to empty one's head of words, (which is therapeutic); any psycho-analyst might agree, of course, and yet the process is deeper and far more wide-ranging; all writing, whether recreational, experimental or otherwise, (and yet only that which is undertaken in the name of leisure - that is, writing which is not a part of some academic or professional work-related obligation) is basically unprompted, and yet the act of writing itself becomes as necessary and as all-encompassing as prayer for the religious, food for the gastronome, scoring goals for football players.

the urge to write is deeply enmeshed in me to such an extent that if a day should pass in which i have not marked a page with words, then i feel as if i have not justified myself as a person; indeed, i feel deeply uncomfortable; my writing may be recreational, but it functions as the conscience made real; when i was a child i anticipated only the days when it would rain : the teachers kept us in and passed us paper on which we could draw, but i didn't draw, i could see no point : for me the written word was more important, and a part of me felt so much joy in creating something in this manner that the whole process, those odd hours of illicit composition, felt like mere moments in which i could soar beyond the confines of the classroom, beyond the rain-speckled windows, intense, blessed, magical moments.

as i became older the urge to write stayed with me; i saw happiness in ink, i felt divine with a pen; on hot summer nights i would sweat at the writing desk - (suffering made the whole thing more epic, more valuable, that the manner of its composition should be as much a story as the narrative itself) - while every holiday would be seen only through the context of the notebooks that i filled; i remember seaside country lanes, clutching a new exercise book and already captivated by the idea of the stories that would fill it, or hot canadian nights on the basement floor, fusing together the real and the imaginary, the adventures of the world around me with those in my head; i remember weekends staying at my grandparents entranced by the idea that the stories just had to be captured, and all the time, every weekend, writing at every opportunity; the best times were those in which it was as if i had entered a trance, and all that existed were the pen and the page and my brain - nothing else physical, all mental, all within; how happy i was when the trance was broken to realise that i had lived, just for a short while, as intensely as might be possible.

what you must really understand is that, in writing so avidly, i spent my formative years hard at work while my friends were playing, and now, with my friends hard at work, it is i who is playing; the intricacies and the minutiae, the detail of every single sentence can seem annoying at the time, and doubtful, and inconsequential, and often downright false, but the moment i step back from the page i feel that kick inside of me that comes each time i remind myself how privileged i am to be engaged in such a thoroughly creative process; indeed it surprises me that the world is not full of writers, or perhaps it is : perhaps we all go back to our secret desks and conjure words out of paper and ink, perhaps we all formulate narratives in our spare moments, versions of ourselves and of the world, alternatives, paradoxes - perhaps i really am not that special at all; it is a comforting image to think of all the lonely rooms over the planet, inhabited by souls driven by the secret whims of literature intent on adding their voices to the parliament of words.

writing, though, is a suffocation of the present moment; like any religious devotee, i cannot enjoy the world unless certain strictures and processes have been put in to place; i feel awkward, uncomfortable, edgy, particularly if i have enjoyed a moment without any literary reference; this leads me to consider the future : there may come a time, i am quite aware, when i can no longer write, and the idea fills me with horror; to think that i will not participate, that my words shall no longer dance, that one day i will come across a full stop or a mark of punctuation which signals the end - oh, it sends a shiver right through me!; or perhaps this is why i write so furiously, getting the words in before they run dry, filling the page so that i have no time to look back, and remember, and read them, and curse the time that i have wasted on grammar and syntax, while those around me get on with the simple act of living; until then i shall reach out and grab spare words with sweaty palms, and slam them on the page, and laugh that lives exist bereft of bright imaginings.

london
april 2009