When I reflect on why I stand here in the blogosphere or foray through the undergrowth of Twitterland, I’m drawn to what Jonathan Coe wrote in his biography of BS Johnson, Like A Fiery Elephant :

‘Novel writing is … an act of lunatic faith in the notion that by adding something to the world we might be improving it. The stakes are that high, and taking our lead from B S Johnson we should occasionally throw off our wretched middle-class English self-deprecation (with which he was so thoroughly unencumbered) and say as much.  Not many novelists are prepared to do that: to own up to their responsibilities – to the form, to their readers, to the tradition they are inheriting. That is what B S Johnson meant by “writing as though it matters, as though they meant it, as though they meant it to matter”.’

I know what it is to be constrained by ‘middle-class English self-deprecation’ and have decided that the only way to break these shackles is to follow BS Johnson’s example. This is paradoxical when virtual ink is cheap. The pages of the world-wide-web groan with the weight of so much solipsistic ‘chatter’. The concision of Twitter encourages profligacy rather than parsimony.

But I can make sense of it as long as this is my credo: Yes, use any method of communication to put your novelist alter-ego ‘out there’, but make sure, every time you do, you write as though it matters.