I first started writing the curious tale of Mr Tumnal during my honeymoon on 3 June 2009. A little over four year’s later, at 23:10 on Saturday 27 June 2013, I finished it. It is one-year to the day that the London 2012 Olympics started. Over the past few days I’ve been listening to the music from the Isles of Wonder opening ceremony which has been a source of creative inspiration of late. By coincidence I discovered that BBC3 were reshowing the ceremony this evening so I switched from iPod to TV as I continued to write…
I first came up with the idea for this story – a story of a man who marries his imaginary friend and has an imaginary child with with his imaginary friend – on an August day in 2006. I was car-sharing with Caroline at the time. It was my turn to drive and as I pulled away from the house I remember saying, “It’s a bit autumnal today” …to which Caroline replied, “Who’s Mr Tumnal?” Seven years later, not only do I know all to well who Mr Tumnal is, I also know what happened to him.
Mr Tumnal’s story fills three leather-wrap journals – that first on the bottom of the pile was a birthday present in 2009 and I can still remember the fear and trepidation with which I wrote the first words. There’s also a nervousness when writing in a new, beautiful, journal. What if I make a mistake and spoil the first page? I didn’t spoil the first page, and the story continued to come.
I’m pleased to have finished this story, but I fear that I am going to feel a bit bereft now that its done. This is silly really, as although I’ve finished the story, I’ve not really finished. I’ve got to reread it, redraft it, probably hate it for a time, leave it, come back to it, read it again and fall back in love with it, redraft it again, edit it, have it edited, and then, maybe, consider either getting it published or going again down the Indie route. Not really any reason to feel bereft…
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