I’ve just finished Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex – all 800 pages of it – and have now started Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. Both are classics in their own way. I’ll review Second Sex properly on my Philosophics Blog, but here I want to think about Trainspotting in relation to my current manuscript, Needle’s Edge.
Interestingly, Trainspotting was a ChatGPT recommendation. I fed in my draft of Needle’s Edge and this was one of the books it said my work resembled. Two chapters in, I see the connexion. First, the subject matter – drugs and addiction. Second, the rawness of the experience.
There are differences, of course. Trainspotting is rooted in Leith, Scotland; Needle’s Edge belongs to the East Coast of the United States – Delaware and Philadelphia. Welsh draws heavily on dialect and vernacular, with a narrative voice that’s linguistically dense and aurally charged. In Needle’s Edge, the style is pared down. Sentence fragments, middle dots instead of full stops, and an intentional “lower” register mirror the protagonist’s fractured perception and limited resources.
That gap in register creates a different authorial challenge. With every edit pass, I find myself policing intrusions of my vocabulary into her voice. Welsh, by contrast, can deploy a broader lexicon and trust the dialectal texture to keep it authentic. Listening to Trainspotting, I’m struck by how words and turns of phrase leap out – sometimes apt for Needle’s Edge, but often just a shade too polished for Stacey’s world.
Both texts orbit around environments that resist glamour. Welsh’s squat flats and pubs are grimy and feral; Needle’s Edge’s motel rooms and sidewalks are littered with fast-food wrappers, orange caps, and fading unicorn posters. Addiction erodes bodies in both stories, but the textures differ – Scotland’s industrial gray versus the East Coast’s cheap motels and suburban detritus.
As for the film version of Trainspotting, I saw it long ago and remember almost nothing. The novel isn’t refreshing my memory either; it feels like a separate creature altogether. Which is fitting: both Trainspotting and Needle’s Edge are less about plot than about capturing a lived texture, a rhythm of voices and environments that mainstream narratives usually discard.
Some bloke on social media posted to celebrate hitting his 10-book milestone for the year. It made me reflect on my own. I don’t keep a running tally, but I do use Goodreads, so I reviewed my list. I share it here. Evidently, I’ve read 22 so far. In all honesty, I cheated, because I won’t finish The Second Sex until later this evening or tomorrow morning. Sue me.
The Second Sex —Simone de Beauvoir In its day, I may be given this 4 stars. NONFICTION. Today, perhaps 3, but it’s a seminal work, so I’ll give it 3½.
Notes from Underground —Fyodor Dostoevsky 5 stars. FICTION. Perhaps 4½, rounded up. This came with Apropos of the Wet Snow, where it all falls apart (in a satisfying way).
Crash —J.G. Ballard 3 stars. FICTION. This was a ChatGPT suggestion*. Generous 3. Probably a 2½ if I’m being honest.
Acceptance —Jeff VanderMeer 3 stars. FICTION. This was not as good as Annihilation, but it got the bad taste of Authority out of my mouth. It closed the loop in the Southern Reach universe.
Authority —Jeff VanderMeer 1 star. FICTION. This was horrible. I wanted to read more about the Southern Reach universe. This prequel should have been an email.
Annihilation —Jeff VanderMeer 4 stars. NONFICTION. This was a ChatGPT suggestion*. I liked it. Much better than the movie with Natalie Portman.
Never Let Me Go —Kazuo Ishiguro 4 stars. NONFICTION. This was a ChatGPT suggestion*. It took a few chapters to see where this was going, but it was worth the wait.
The Left Hand of Darkness —Ursula K. Le Guin 3 stars. FICTION. This was a ChatGPT suggestion*. Read 8 or 9 chapters. Didn’t realise it was #7 in a series. Was OK. Not a Sci-Fi fan. Love her short stories.
English after RP —Geoff Lindsey 3 stars. NONFICTION. I liked this book and the author, but I can’t justify completing a linguistics reference book at this time. Maybe later.
* ChatGPT recommendations stem from my feeding draft manuscripts and prompting who it reads like.
She’s Come Undone is a novel published in 1992, written by Wally Lamb, no relation to Shaun the Sheep.
I haven’t read She’s Come Undone, and it’s unlikely that I ever will. I read a social media post where the author supplanted The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy as his top book. These don’t appear to be the same genre, so don’t ask me how the list was structured. Perhaps books about bears. Does She’s Come Undone have any passages on bears – prequel to The Revenant? We may never find out.
The reason this blog post exists is that I was reading the reviews on Goodreads – 3.91 of 5 stars. So, I read some reviews. This woman offered only one star and swore she’d have given fewer if she could. Odd, how zeros don’t carry the same weight. They act more like NULLs than zeroes. Sad, that.
Evidently, some commenters were furious at her revealing the spoiler. I share her defence here. For those who have yet to watch Citizen Kane, I warn you of the spoiler in her response. Read on at your own risk.
Addendum: Every so often, someone comes along and flags this review as having spoilers. Complaining about spoilers in this review is, not to put too fine a point on it, really stupid. Most of the plot points I mention here are either in the actual cover copy of the book, in the Goodreads summary, or occur somewhere within the first ten pages or so. The rest are so vague (e.g., hooking up with a bad boyfriend — a plot point that probably occurs in some form in, oh, half of the books ever written) that if you consider them “spoilers,” I’m not really sure why you read book reviews at all.
Further addendum: If you’re about to complain about spoilers in this review, please see comment 55 below. If you’re that hysterical about spoilers, maybe stop reading online reviews before you read the book. Also, the book was published 25 years ago and I think the statute of limitations has really run on this one. Rosebud was his sled!!
I’m taking a break from editing to share something about the protagonist in my latest novel-in-progress, Needle’s Edge. She’s a woman – yes, but not just. She’s a prostitute. She’s an addict. And she’s three people.
There’s Sarah, her given name. The name reserved for friends, family, and those rare few who know her without conditions. It’s the name she hears in moments of tenderness, or shame, or memory.
Then there’s Stacey, the escort, the stripper, the performer. This is the name on her ads. The one whispered in hotel rooms and shouted in clubs. Stacey is curated. Sexual. Selective. She knows what sells and how to sell it.
And then there’s Pink, the street persona. The user. Pink is who shows up when Sarah needs to score. She trades in slang and silence. She wears a different skin. A different currency.
Three names. One woman. No seams showing – if she can help it.
In her world, compartmentalisation is survival. If a dealer connects the dots and knows she’s an escort, she’s vulnerable. If a client finds out she’s using, her value drops. Appearances are everything. Rates depend on it. Reputation is a balancing act on a razor’s edge. And so each name carries its own set of rules, risks, and rituals.
But here’s the deeper cut: Who’s the “real” Sarah?
Is Stacey fake? Is Pink less than? Is Sarah just the base layer beneath the makeup and muscle memory?
They’re all her. None of them. Some of each. Identity is slippery.
The left hemisphere of the brain craves coherence. It wants simplicity, categories, reduction. But the truth is, identity is a heuristic. A convenient fiction. And Sarah, more than most, knows this. Where most people perform one role and pretend it’s a self, she splits hers openly. She curates them. Manages them. Leverages them.
And yet, the cost is high.
Stacey and Pink are exhausting. High maintenance. High risk. But being Sarah isn’t a comfort either. It’s just what’s left when the others are stripped away. She doesn’t retreat into Sarah so much as collapse into her.
In that way, Sarah isn’t a self – she’s a default.
The irony? For all this agency, for all her awareness, she’s still trapped in identities designed for consumption. For transaction. For escape. Whether it’s sex, drugs, or memory, she’s always negotiating something.
I watched this video this morning: Why I Quit Goodreads. Apparently, people are fleeing Goodreads like it’s a sinking ship. Frankly, I didn’t realise they’d ever boarded.
Video: Why I Quit Goodreads by Alison Reads Books
I’ve used Goodreads for years. Not out of love – habit. I was on another platform before Amazon bought both and quietly euthanised the lesser one. So, like any good digital serf, I migrated. Goodreads never really improved. But that’s not what this post is about.
The woman in the video, Alison, recounts how she got sucked into the vortex of reading-as-performance. A treadmill of trending titles, five-star pressure, and dopamine farming. In short: social media with spines. She, like me, identifies as an introvert. Social media, she says, offered connection on her terms.
Fine. But here’s where we part ways: I don’t read what’s popular. I read like I write: deliberately, slowly, and mostly alone. I don’t care what the hive is reading. I don’t follow BookTok. I’m not hunting genre tropes like Pokémon. I’m not even watching telly.
That’s not snobbery. That’s filtration.
Yes, I read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, not because they’re trending, but because they have staying power. I read Beauvoir and Foucault, not because they’re fashionable, but because they dismantle the very notion of fashion.
Ironically, AI has been more useful to me than Goodreads ever was. I ask it about tropes, continuity, and which authors my work resembles. Sometimes, it throws out a name I don’t know. So I investigate. If I see a resonance, great; I might lean in or veer away. Not because I want to copy, but because “originality” is a fairytale. Everything is recombinant DNA, literary or otherwise.
I’ve read friend recommendations. Mixed results. Often disastrous. I don’t care how many millions adore The Hunger Games, or William Gibson, or Taylor bloody Swift. That’s not an insult; it’s a mismatch. Their work just doesn’t speak to me. And that’s the point of art, it’s not for everyone.
Because of this, I’ve grown wary of recommendations. I no longer approach them with hope; I approach them like a suspicious mushroom in a stranger’s risotto.
So why do I still use Goodreads? To track what I’ve read and, occasionally, write reviews…for myself. If others find those reviews useful, great. If Goodreads’ recommendation engine serves up a gem, brilliant; but it rarely does. Algorithms don’t understand headspace. They see pattern, not mood.
I might binge Dostoevsky and Tolstoy one week, but that doesn’t mean I want a Russian lit syllabus. After Notes from Underground and The Death of Ivan Ilych, I finally cracked open The Second Sex – a book that’s loomed on my TBR like a monument.
Sometimes reading fuels my writing. Sometimes it stalls it. But unlike Alison, I never needed Goodreads to tell me who I am as a reader. And I sure as hell don’t need social media to validate my literary tastes.
If you’re quitting Goodreads because it became too performative, maybe you were never using it for the right reasons. Or maybe, like most platforms, it just stopped being fun once everyone else showed up.
About the cover image: “photo of a stereotypical punk rocker anarchist reading a book in a crowd of people staring at their mobile phones”
I’m not sure this Midjourney render captures much of the essence of my prompt, but there it is.
The novel Propensity is divided into three sections, each with fifteen chapters – because symmetry is pleasing and my OCD deserves a biscuit. The first third plays it straight. More or less. A novel in the classical sense. You know – plot, people, dialogue, the odd existential quip. The middle third begins to fray at the edges, like an overstretched cardigan at an avant-garde poetry slam. And the final third? Well, it abandons form like a cult member in a cornfield, embracing the experimental, the elliptical, and the structurally suspect.
Chapter 28 is where the wheels come off. Or rather, where we slap on entirely different wheels – hexagonal ones. It takes the form of a standardised test. Yes, a literal test. Multiple choice. But fret not – there’s no grade, no timer, no Scantron sheet. Just questions. Absurd ones. Possibly even meaningful ones, though that’s above my pay grade.
Is it serious? Not remotely. Does it “advance the plot”? Hardly. Does it offer deep character insight? Not unless you’re profiling the author. But it does serve as a playful rupture in the narrative – a breather, a jab, a meta-giggle at the expense of structure and expectation. And let’s be honest: if you’ve made it to Chapter 28, you probably deserve a bit of a reward for tolerating everything prior.
As for spoilers: yes, technically, there are some. But without context, they’re like IKEA instructions written in Sanskrit. You might glimpse the shadow of something meaningful, but you’ll have no bloody idea what you’re looking at. No harm, no foul.
You can view Chapter 28 (along with several other amuse-bouches) for free on the Propensity book page. It’s downloadable as a PDF. No catch. No mailing list sign-up. I don’t want your email. I want your confusion.
Now, go take the test. Or don’t. It’s not graded. But it is a chapter.
I’ve been lurking and participating in many author and writing groups, but I’m not sure this is a productive strategy.
Like other authors, my goal is to network and connect to readers, and more importantly, buyers. The problem is that other authors, like myself, share the same goal in mind. There is no reciprocity, no “coincidence of wants,” which is that I happen to be offering a book that you might find engaging.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
Of course, one can frequent reader groups, but these are often inundated with publications, so there is no focus. I don’t write genre fiction, so I don’t have the benefit of, say, a sci-fi group, romance, werewolves, and whatnot. I (tend to) write literary fiction without identifiable tropes and storyline. As I’ve written before, there are no Hero’s Journeys, no saving the cat.
Indeed, there are literary fiction groups, but there are numerous motivations for this reader cohort. It is not homogeneous. I could (and do) hunt for sub-categories, but these are less fruitful.
I see dozens of ads splashed on my screen, suggesting someone can help me write my next book by telling me what’s hot, what’s selling. I am not interested in writing books that sell. I want to tell my stories. I am not a commercial writer in the same way that I was never a commercial musician. I am interested in the art. Of course, I want to sell my works, but it needs to be on my terms. If I were to sell out, it would just be another job with all of the intrinsic joy sucked out of it. The extrinsic appeal of money is not enough to compensate. Some people who take this commercial convince themselves, “at least I’m still writing,” or painting, or performing for a living. I am not able to comfort myself with this self-delusion. As the saying goes, ignorance is bliss.
Since I’m ranting…
I’ve been haunting author and writing groups for a while now – lurking in the shadows, peeking behind the curtain, occasionally tossing in a snide comment or two. Call it market research. Call it masochism. Either way, I’m starting to suspect it’s not the most productive use of my time.
You see, like most of these poor souls, I’m here to “network” (whatever that means in late-stage capitalism) and, more importantly, connect with actual readers. Buyers. The unicorns. Not fellow authors trying to sell me their 17-book werewolf reverse-harem saga or the latest AI-generated cover that somehow still manages to have three left hands.
And here’s the rub: we’re all pitching. No one’s catching. It’s a bazaar where everyone’s hawking their wares and no one’s carrying a purse. The law of the marketplace – what economists once called the “coincidence of wants” – simply doesn’t hold. I don’t want what they’re selling. They don’t want what I’m offering. It’s not even personal. It’s just noise.
Could I wade into reader groups instead? Sure. But these are often genre-clogged pools: romance, sci-fi, vampires with high school diplomas. God bless them. It’s just not my lane. I write literary fiction. You know, the kind without a tidy plot, without a cat-saving hero, and – brace yourselves – without an obligatory third-act redemption arc.
Even literary fiction groups aren’t much help. That label encompasses too much: Booker-bait bildungsromans, moody minimalism, and the occasional Proustian doorstop for good measure. And reader motivation in these spaces is hardly uniform. Some want to weep. Some want to feel clever. Some just want to say they read something “important” at brunch. None of them are asking for me – and that’s fine. But it does make targeting a pain in the arse.
Then come the ads. The snake-oil salesmen. “Here’s how to write a book that sells!” “Tap into trending genres!” “Master the market!” As if we’re all desperate to become a literary McDonald’s franchisee, pumping out Big Macs with words. I didn’t become a writer to stuff my soul into a Happy Meal box. I didn’t become a musician to churn out jingles. I don’t paint by numbers and I don’t plot by templates.
Yes, I want to sell my work – but on my terms. I’m not allergic to money; I just refuse to whore out my creativity to chase it. Some people convince themselves that so long as they’re still writing – still playing the game – they’ve won. I’m not built for that flavour of self-delusion. Call it ego. Call it integrity. I call it survival.
Since I’m already up here on my soapbox, let me kick it once or twice for good measure.
There’s a mountain of writing advice out there. I’ve read plenty. Some of it’s even good. But much of it is just a conveyor belt back to the same old factory settings: save the cat, beat the plot, rinse and repeat. I don’t write that way. I don’t read that way. I need more than recycled tropes wearing different hats. I need teeth. Friction. Depth.
Do I use tropes? Of course. We all do. Language itself is a trope. But I twist them. I break them. I bury them in the garden and see what grotesque things bloom. It’s not even effortful – it’s just how my brain is wired. Call it a feature, not a bug.
Anyway, that’s enough bark for one day. If you’ve ever stared into the marketing void and felt it blink indifferently back, I see you. If you’re a writer trying to walk the tightrope between integrity and visibility, I hear you. If you’ve got thoughts, confessions, or sacrificial goats to share, drop them in the comments. Misery loves literate company.
I’ve read a wide range of genres. I’ve found them most unsatisfying and therefore unappealing. I am not saying that these are now good. I’m saying that they don’t resonate with me. It’s why I don’t watch television and find few movies interesting. I need more than templated tropes.
Do I use tropes? Of course I do. Writing a book without tropes would be nearly impossible. I try to subvert tropes and expectations. In practice, I don’t even have to try very hard. It’s how my brain works on its own.
Last but not least, I don’t need a writer’s group, starter ideas, prompts, or exercises. I don’t get writer’s block, probably because I am not trying to force a plot.
Anyway, I’ll hop down off my soapbox. I wonder how many other writers share some of my perspectives and challenges. Let me know in the comments.
Welcome, dear reader, to the eternal skirmish between Art and Entertainment, or as the marketing departments like to call it, Literary Fiction vs Commercial Fiction. This is not just a genre squabble; it is the ideological showdown between truth-seeking masochists and market-savvy optimists.
Literary Fiction: Starving Artist Chic
Literary Fiction is what happens when someone spends ten years writing a novel that doesn’t sell but gets shortlisted for an award no one outside The Guardian has heard of. It is the sanctum of character studies, of prose polished until it cuts glass, of metaphors so dense they require footnotes and a whisky.
It doesn’t have to be inaccessible, of course—it just often chooses to be, on principle. Plot is optional, punctuation negotiable. The point is to mean something. To explore the human condition. To examine alienation in a post-industrial neoliberal hellscape, not to entertain your aunt with a beach read.
It’s not that Literary Fiction hates readers. It just isn’t convinced they’re entirely necessary.
Commercial Fiction: Mass Appeal on Tap
Enter Commercial Fiction: the cheerfully formulaic cousin who makes six figures ghostwriting romance under three pseudonyms while sipping cocktails on a cruise. It values clarity, pace, and payoff. There is a beginning, a middle, and—brace yourself—a satisfying end.
It’s written with the audience in mind. The actual audience, not the imagined one you conjure during your third espresso in a North London café while reworking the opening line for the sixth time.
Commercial Fiction exists to be read. Literary Fiction exists to be discussed. Possibly in a room full of mirrors. Possibly after death.
The High-Low Culture Divide
If this were the Renaissance, Literary Fiction would be frescoes in a cathedral—revered, roped-off, and best viewed with your neck craned in discomfort. Commercial Fiction would be the travelling puppet show outside: rowdy, raucous, full of cheap laughs and bawdy jokes. Guess which one brings joy to the masses and which one gets preserved by UNESCO.
There is still this Victorian hangover about high art and low art, as if prose needs a monocle and a trust fund to be taken seriously. Literary Fiction clings to its moral high ground, publishing monographs on the death of the novel, while Commercial Fiction’s out here resurrecting it one bestseller at a time.
Intention Matters
Let’s be honest: some literary writers stumble into the bestseller lists. It’s not beneath them—it just wasn’t the point. Conversely, when a commercially-minded author attempts “Art,” the results are often embarrassing—like a stand-up comic trying Shakespeare in clown shoes.
Approaching from a commercial angle and achieving something artistically resonant? That’s the alchemy. That’s the rare bird. But the reverse—starting with art and accidentally making money—is a tale as old as Joyce (who, let’s remember, died broke and banned).
Can’t We All Just Get Along?
No. Just kidding. Sort of.
Yes, there is crossover. Yes, The Road is both. But let’s not pretend that Twilight and To the Lighthouse are playing the same game. One is trying to build a fanbase; the other is trying to dissect perception itself. And while both may involve vampires, only one is metaphorical.
In Conclusion
Commercial Fiction is a warm bath. Literary Fiction is a cold shower that leaves you questioning your life choices. One sells. The other sulks. One entertains. The other enlightens (maybe). You can love both, loathe both, or—if you’re cursed with a literary soul—you can write one while envying the other.
Either way, don’t pretend they’re the same. One is art. The other is commerce. Sometimes they shake hands. Occasionally they snog. But more often, they glare at each other from opposite ends of the bookstore, muttering into their blurbs.
Does anyone else use writing props to help immerse yourself in adjascent fiction?
This unicorn image is from a poster. I am using it as a reference for a current project. It’s already seared into my brain, but it renders it somehow more real.
This unicorn poster hung on the wall of the inspiration for the protagonist of an upcoming novel, Needle’s Edge. It featuers prominently – almost has a speaking part.
Maps
Hemo Sapiens: Awakening is set in near-future Manchester, UK, so I had maps of Manchester at the ready. It helped me to add some realism. Because a trip from a nearby town into the city only took 15 to 20 minutes, I had to edit down a scene I was hoping would fill an hour. I could have used a location further away, but it wouldn’t have made sense to the plot, and I hate those sorts of plot gimmicks.
Sustenance is set in Iowa. I not only had a map of Iowa, I had resources on flora and fauna, so I could name-drop. I’ve visited parts of Iowa, but I couldn’t have drawn these details from memory—and I mightn’t have known the names or the onomonapoeia fascimiles.
Temporal Babel is set in New Mexico, so besides a map for highway references and distances from landmarks—towns, cities, and reservations—, I saved image resources of local photographs, landscapes, plants, buildings, attire, and so on. It really helps we with the description, something that is not otherwise my forte.
Propensity is set in no place in particular, so I used no maps, but I studied interiors of institutions, prisons, laboratories, and the like.
This is another unicorn sticker that was in the house of the protagonist, but it doesn’t make the cut. It still makes me chuckle.
Another unfinished novel, Everlasting Cocksucker, is set in Philly. I spent severl years in and around there, so I know the lay of the land. Still, I find maps useful.
I put this project ont he backburner because I received so much hate over the subject matter. I decided to concentrate on other projects. But, I created a physical shadowbox as a reminder of the protagonist.
Image: Reconstruction of a shadowbox.
In this story, this represents her life habits: Newport Menthol 100s in a box, Red Bull, Maruchan Ramen, and tarot readings. The Hanged Man is relevant to the plot. When I return to the manuscript, I’ll have this as, let’s call it, inspiraration.
If I wrote genre fiction, this wouldn’t work as well – Sci-Fi or Fantasy and whatnot. It might work for historical fiction though.
I was feeling smug. Fourth revision pass. Plot matrix built. Columns for chapter, scene, POV, date, time, location, word count, and emotional arc – because I’m that kind of monster. I even added colour-coding.
And it worked. Mostly.
After pruning and polishing, it finally felt ready to ship. Just a couple cosmetic tweaks. A trim here, a varnish there. Run a lint roller over the dialogue. Call it done.
Except.
The matrix – traitorous little bastard – exposed a structural fault so elegant I’d almost admired it. The problem? Pregnancy. Not mine, the protagonist’s. (Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)
Turns out, I’d compressed over a decade of real-life events into two years of narrative space. Bold. Efficient. Reckless. I’d wrung out the filler, reshuffled a few puzzle pieces, and declared the thing plausible.
Only it wasn’t.
When I sorted the scenes chronologically, the matrix coughed. The story broke like a cheap lawn chair. There she was: visibly pregnant while also, somehow, gallivanting about in scenes that would’ve required a different physiology entirely. Not an Olympian, but the metaphor holds.
And that’s when it hit me: time may be a flat circle, but gestation is not. No amount of POV tricks or narrative backflips can make a third-trimester body do first-trimester things. Biology, the ultimate killjoy.
So now I’m doing surgery. Not delicate surgery, either. I’m sawing out whole sections, rebuilding connective tissue, and laying down scar tissue where the timeline used to be. I’ll need new plot scaffolding to support the pregnancy and its repercussions. It’s fine. It’s good. It’s hell.
This is revision. We go in thinking we’re buffing up the finish, only to discover we paved over a sinkhole.
Ridley Park 