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This is the sixth and final instalment of how writing has brought me to the place I am today. How at times it has quite literally saved my life. How there have been numerous ahem, bumps in the road, yet I’ve learned so much about writing and the publishing world and I want to share it with those who are maybe just starting out or thinking; why the fuck I am putting myself through this? I’ve passed on seventeen ‘lessons’ so far, which perhaps in hindsight could more appropriately be described as tips or suggestions. I’m too tired to go back and edit that now. Anyways, there’s a few more tips/lessons (call ‘em what you want) in this final instalment. Read on.

Life at home was now unbearable. I couldn’t tell the truth from a lie. My step-daughter of fifteen years left never to return. Another close family member took their own life. Others tried. I couldn’t abide the person I lived with. I could feel the retrograde. My life was going backwards. Collapsing. I was no longer sleeping properly and I felt physically sick from the butterflies that devoured me. At night, I’d get into bed and lie awake for hours trying to work out how to stay alive. How to save my children and myself. I may get an hours sleep and then something compelled me to get up, get dressed and drive. I’d find myself at motorway bridges, judging them for height, estimating the time from fall to impact. This one particular morning I was right at the edge staring at the three empty lanes beneath me. I remember how the early morning downpour had made the road shine, giving the impression of black glass. I remember how beautiful the streetlight-amber glow looked as it bounced joyously off the tarmac surface. I was letting the wind gently blow me; my body happy to let it take me whichever way it chose. If its wont was I went over; that kind of ‘wasn’t my fault’. But, conversely the wind picked up and blew me back from the edge and on to the pavement below, and I realised in that moment that I still saw beauty in the world. And I knew I had to change things.

I wrote Drift Stumble Fall about how people’s lives appear from the outside and that it is usually nothing like the reality of what’s going on inside. And then I politely asked for a divorce. At last, it was just me and my children, and so began the unravelling of what had been going on inside my ‘home’ for the last five years. To fill my time, and distract me, I read and read and read. And read. Lesson Eighteen, and it should go without saying: read. I learned and continue to learn so much from reading other authors. The way they use language, how they describe things, the way their characters communicate. Sometimes, I learn how not to write. But many times, I pick up ideas on pacing or how they phrase a conversation. It’s like gold dust. It may only happen a handful of times a novel but there are always things to learn. I mean, doesn’t every musician develop their style from listening to how others do it?

I’m six novels in and I learned two lessons relatively late in the day. Lesson Nineteen, always, always begin a novel with an impact chapter. Something that takes the reader immediately into the action. Immerse them into a world they can immediately understand. Bring in some kind of jeopardy. And then leave the reader with a desire to read on. Not necessarily a cliffhanger (though of course these work) but more so a level of intrigue, that human desire to know what happens.

All of a sudden, the human race was dying worldwide. We had just stepped into the COVID Age. My dear Nanna had died a year or so before at the age of ninety-six and I knew I had to tell the story of her last days in the nursing home. I also developed an idea that what if I was estranged from her (I wasn’t) and what if she knew some information that would die with her if I didn’t get her to tell me. And… what if that information was about my mother who had been missing since I was a child, never to be seen again. Information which would tell me of her fate and unlock a disturbing family secret. COVID had got me into gear. When seeing footage of the poor people in Italy, I was worried that we literally wouldn’t all make it out alive. I sat down to write, and finally finished what became 337 in just over six weeks. The story just flowed. And I set myself the challenge of adding a twist which hinged on the very final word. A word which would change your view on everything you had just read.

And this is where Lesson Twenty comes in. Move the story along. In some way, make the reader feel like they are travelling with the characters through each chapter. Although characters may have bland mundane perhaps empty and repetitive lives, this is no excuse to have their scenes repeat by serving up the same event in ten different ways to the reader. There has to be a reason for everything you write. That reason is to tell the reader the story. In every single chapter keep the story moving, so the reader feels like they are getting closer to finding out what happens. Keep its momentum, pace and cadence consistent.

Four years after the end of the COVID outbreak, I’m in a far different place than I ever expected to be. The sadness that has haunted me has in the main disappeared. I’ll soon marry the most caring, funny, virtuous, sincere, kind-natured, loving, patient and genuinely beautiful girl in the world. I just spent the last year high on morphine after being diagnosed with a rare spinal cord disorder whereby I couldn’t stand, sit or walk for more than an hour a day. I never thought I’d write again. The come-down off the drugs was equally as bad as the spinal cord operation I had. After some amazing work by my surgeon (shout out Dr Gulve!) I am able to start writing again and in some ways this series was a combination of cleansing my soul and gearing myself up to begin writing properly again.

It's amazing (but strangely not uncommon) how nervous I can get either before starting a new novel or writing the last chapter of a novel I’ve been working on. The main reason however for writing these pieces was to try to pass on some of the things I’ve learned to help other authors. I know how difficult this solitary vocation of choice can be. Especially when there is nobody who understands the problems writing can bring (those plentiful evenings you are distracted because you are trying to work out how to phrase a scene or how to structure a sentence).

I’m currently finalising a young adult novel Surkhull Bay with an Editor from Bloomsbury, which I hope will hit the shelves soon. I’ve already pretty much written my eighth novel One Green Bottle in my head. Just need to get it down on the page.

So, ‘Thank You’ for reading this outpouring. Everything you have read is entirely true and every word is from the heart. The final Lesson. Number Twenty-One. You may have been wondering what the series title ‘M is for Meaningless’ actually means. My real name is Jonathan Lee. But, when I was first published there was already an author using that name, so my publisher was pretty much told I had to change my name. I came up with the letter M for M Jonathan Lee almost instantly. It stands for exactly that: Meaningless. Lesson Twenty-One: don’t take yourself too seriously.

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Note from the author:

If anyone wants any clarity on anything written in this series please don’t hesitate to make contact. By arrangement, Richard can pass on my email address.

Jonathan