Harry McFry, GPI.
Conceived in the midst of acute depression, fuelled (at first) on a potent mix of gin and tonic and Mirtazapine (before graduating to red wine and a different pharmacological concoction) and helped along the way by friends, family and ... readers.
Too much information? I hope not. Let's talk about depression and how it drags you under so that you get to think there isn't any future. How you lose all sense of self worth. How confidence seeps away, until you can't even trust yourself to tie your shoe laces. How the bleakness of it wraps itself around you like a blanket of despair.
Wonder, then, that locked deep away inside you is a kernel of ... something. A seed, that refuses to die. That germinates, even in the dark of your lowest moments, and batters itself against the husk to emerge, and flower.
Think that all your creativity has been stamped on - but realise, finally, it isn't dead.
That's how I feel about Harry. I've loved every minute, every second of writing it. I've been sustained in knowing that others have liked or enjoyed the story, even while I've lost myself in some of the telling of it. It isn't balanced. It's plot is contorted. But the fact that friends, family and readers have stuck with it over three months gives me the confidence to continue, to the end (however bitter it is for Harry). And I will shave it here, compound it there, when it is done, so that hpefully it becomes the story it should be: the Case of the Missing Family. Everyone's missing family - including mine.
All of the above is by way of an apology. I'm off for a few days away, so it will be a week or so before Chapter 101 gets published. Think of me - just like I'll be thinking of you. And of Harry. And Lillian, Laurel, Cyril, Stan, Danny, Ana, Alan, Bill, Dacre, Jonathan, and all the rest.
90,500 words keyed into a computer. 9,246 pageloads of the blog.
Thank you.
Thomas Hamburger Jnr
8 comments:
What a wonderful photograph. The red against the old fashioned typewriter is so attractive. Where do you obtain your photos?
You are very interesting. Don't you know?
This particular photo was taken by me (which is a rarity on this blog!) and was of a typewriter in a charity shop window. I thought the red book would add a splash of colour!
Thanks!
THJnr
Congratulations!!!
I love Harry!
And will look forward to the next 100 episodes!!
I have a typewriter just like that!
xx
P-
Friendly reminder that tomorrow, June 7th, is Paisley's birthday.
T
Thank you, domestic minx! I never imagined Harry would be 100 chapters when I began his story. Hopefully, it will all be wrapped up in a few more!
theresa - sorry I wasn't around for Paisley's birthday: hope she had a good one!
I am so behind Harry: the majority of my reading time, at present, is on the bus to work - creating something of a problem as far as Harry is concerned (you are not to assume, at this point, that I am one of those posh types with a laptop and wiffy connection - at least I think that's what it's called).
Not to worry, Crofty - just don't try printing it out, or you'll consume a small rainforest somewhere in deepest Denton!
I took the full text (to date)with me on holiday recently, and even printed at 9pt, single line spacing and narrow margins, double sided, it still ran to about 100 pages.
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