The Passing of the Long Distance Runner

Alan Sillitoe, author of Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, has passed away at age 82.

I first read Loneliness when I found it tucked away on my parents' bookshelf. I was a middle-class teeanger who went to a private school. The protagonist of the title story was a working class criminal incarcerated in a Borstal. But the solace and escape he finds in the long-distance running resonated with my teen angst -- I used to go for long, solitary walks as a way of coping with the anger and turmoil I felt inside.

The Guardian has a wonderful interview with Sillitoe from 2008, summarising his working-class youth growing up in Nottingham, his service in the RAF, and his years wandering through France and Tangier while he was writing. It ends with this lovely piece of advice:

So what final piece of advice would he offer wannabe writers? He thinks for a moment. "Make as much time for yourself as you can," he says eventually. "Go on the dole, pretend to go off sick from work, steal or borrow off of your parents; anything that will buy you time."

"I'm not sure we can suggest that kind of thing in the Guardian," I reply.

"OK," he demurs. "Then just tell them to use their imagination."

It sounds as good a place to start as any. And to end.

1.0

57,000 words. It's messy and it's too short and there are almost certainly bits missing.

But I think my novel has its first draft.