What Happens If I Push That One?

Writer and Eight Cuts publisher Mr Dan Holloway shares his proposals for a productive 2012.



As a species, and often to the blind horror of our parents and peers, we learn by trying things out and seeing what happens. After all, “It can’t be that bad, can it?” Or at least, if it is, then no one else will make the same daft mistake again. And so we muddle towards progress, constantly learning how to “fail better.”

But as writers we seem to have the notion that’s not how you do it. We’re told to know what we’re aiming for and then practice doing the same thing over and over till we get there. And so we make incremental progress towards replicating something a gazillion people have already done better.

And then we write articles on how the novel’s going nowhere, or how there’s nothing new after Modernism. Hmm, yeah, I wonder why that is.

Now I’m not going to fetishise “The New.” New isn’t better. Most of the time it’s not even possible. But it’s interesting.

I’m not even saying don’t work hard, don’t focus. Heck, I used to be a powerlifter training 6 times a week to improve three basic kinds of lift. Now *that* is repetitive.

What I’m saying is every now and again put everything to one side and do something just to see what happens. Then bring that back to your long-term projects (if you haven’t discovered something much more fun in the meanwhile) and see how much better they can be. The thing is, if you only do what you’ve always done, you’ll never discover what else is out there. Which isn’t a bad thing in itself. I keep trying very hard not to sound flitty and flighty and like I’m advocating a zero attention span, but isn’t art at least to some extent about that old fashioned thing – wonder? Isn’t there part of it that’s watching someone’s eyes pop out of their head when you show them something they’ve never seen before? More fundamentally, isn’t it about going to a place within yourself you never knew was there?

I’m giving up everything (writing-wise) in 2012 except doing stuff “to see what happens.” A year’s a long time, but why don’t you give it a month, say?

What does that mean? Well, if I could tell you that then it wouldn’t be a voyage of discovery. But let me tell you about the time my wife and I used to go travelling. It was at the height of the budget airline boom. You really could go anywhere in Europe for under a fiver – including taxes – if you weren’t fussy about when you went. So we did. At one point we visited 23 countries in a year. Sometimes leaving the house at 2 on a Sunday morning and getting back at 4 on Monday morning after a brief sleepless sojourn in Luxembourg or Geneva. Being a budding writer (believe it or not I was going to be a travel writer – until air travel went belly up a few years back), I wanted to create a memoir of our trips. My wife being an avid hoarder, the answer just happened. Instead of taking snapshots of our travels, we made scrapbooks out of our receipts. Whatever we bought, down to the last tub of rillettes from Carrefour. Looking back through them now it’s a way better recollection of those trips, of what they actually meant, of what we were feeling at the time, than any number of photos.

Hmm, nice holiday anecdote, but… Well, I guess the point is, don’t do it one way just because “that’s the way you do things.” Try things out. See what happens. Have fun.

Dan will be hosting spoken word sensation The New Libertines at Afflecks Palace 'Three Minute Theatre', Manchester on January 23, featuring 2011 Not The Booker Prize winner Michael Stewart, spoken word femme fatale Sarah-Clare Conlan, award winning author Elizabeth Baines, and more.