Andrew thought he had better say something about the election

Andrew thought he had better say something about the election.

When Andrew writes about important subjects like Doctor Who and the Micronauts, he often edits and polishes and checks facts in standard reference works Wikipedia. He generally doesn't start a piece until he has thought up an interesting new angle or spotted something no-one has spotted before. He could perhaps sometimes be legitimately accused of overthinking.

Having just finished a long summation of Tom Baker's ante-penultimate season; he was quite tired. And he was about to go on his annual holiday to Sidmouth. So he thought he would blurt out everything he didn't have to say about the election in a couple of writing sessions and get them out into the world with minimum editing. 

Of course, I know how this goes. I expect that every writer does. You hand a friend some hastily written note and said "This is a very rough draft of the first couple of paragraphs of an idea I had, could you scan it and tell me if it's worth carrying on with?" and the friend will definitely say "I think there is an "e" in phenomenologial, and it would look better with Em dashes." Hand a friend a typescript and say "This is going to the publisher tomorrow; could you check it for any really obvious typos?" and the friend will say "I don't think the main character's dialect was authentic, and it would work better if it was set in the seventeenth century rather than modern times."

At least three times in the last twelve months I have published highly confessional apologia explaining why I am who I am and why I do what I do. No-one appeared to notice. Not that I particularly write in order to be noticed. And the best feedback is that sixty people send me money each month so that I can buy time to carry on doing what I am doing. But I fully expect any off-the-cuff and not particularly well thought through remarks I make about Kier Starmer is likely to be taken as my irrevocable judgement and result in a deluge of six or seven messages from the American internet.

I like both kinds of responses. I liked it when people use my blog as a forum to talk about things loosely related to my blog. Unfortunately, He Who Must Not Be Named killed or curtailed that, as one assumes he intended. I like the other kind, the kind when people give me money, even more. But I am kind of aware that just saying what I am thinking is a hostage to fortune.

I suppose there are always moments when writers start to write about why they write about writing. I know that some people find the Jocycean web of cultural reference points and insider jokes a barrier to reading my nonsense: so let's just say that the forgoing was my equivalent of Howard the Duck issue 16 and move on, shall we?

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