Welcome!

This is my word garden on the internet. I’m Michael Walters, author of The Complex, a novel out with Salt Publishing. I’m deep in the writing of a follow-up. I also have a PATREON where you can follow me and get more about my writing in particular, including notes on the novels I’m reading.

And check out my film collections in the sidebar—I do love a film challenge!

February 21 2023, 20:18

Content apocalypse

This is the tipping point. I’m fifty in two weeks. I’ve watched fifty percent of the 800 films I own, and even less of the books. The amount of time I have left is constricting, but the number of books and films I own keeps expanding. Something has to give. I need a new philosophy. What I consume (bleurgh) must feed (this is family trauma speaking) whatever I am creating. I envy those who have perhaps always done this. Collecting and list-making is the hoarder’s comfort.

February 18 2023, 18:26

Emotional weather

I’m staying with Dad for the weekend, and because he’s having some new health problems, it’s quite hard work. My mother was always the anxious one. Now it's me.

Scene from a table with people in a cafe

January 22 2023, 16:04

Writing jiggle

I’m pleased with how consistently I’ve posted to Patreon, but I feel guilty that I’m not giving enough value to people, so I’ve jiggled things around.

December 31 2022, 20:01

Elisa Gabbert on why writers write

Twitter shines at surfacing what I need, when I need it, in this case Elisa Gabbert’s 2022 book list, within which a link to an essay she wrote, Why Write? That essay sings to me. Gabbert says that Joan Didion wrote fiction to find out what the pictures in her mind meant, and she give several examples of other famous writers who start their stories with an image, or a dream, and chase it down in words, including Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amis and William Faulkner.

Christmas tree reflections on wet streets

December 31 2022, 16:09

Bedrock

Going into the new year, I’m going to do some gentle excavation into my beliefs about writing, because I’m realising I’ve lost touch with what fiction means to me. If there’s no meaning, there’s no purpose.

December 31 2022, 10:47

Adieu, 2022

In time-honoured fashion, here are my favourite discoveries of 2022, in chronological order of publication or release. It’s been a year of three big creative adventures: getting a new job (first in fourteen years); a family holiday in France (first to Paris for a week, then to Morzine in the French Alps); setting up my Patreon (experimenting with a patrons-only podcast). There was very little fiction writing, but plenty of reflective writing.

December 26 2022, 20:11

Love and breakages

I’m excited about 2023. There’s a lot I want to do next year. (This is the case every year.) I’ve just broken a wine glass. I’m at my father's house, and it feels auspicious, although I don’t know why. He has cheap glasses because we are his only wine-drinking visitors. He rarely drinks alcohol anymore, and when he does it’s either lager or a glass of whatever we are having. Anyway, the glass broke neatly at both the top and bottom of the stem, so there were three pieces of glass on the tiled floor.

December 19 2022, 18:47

A dream with Bob Dylan

I don’t remember my dreams that often anymore, but when I’m particularly anxious, or there’s a lot going on, they tend to stick. Last night, I dreamt I was in a hostel of some kind, and I was feeling threatened by a man-child, who was also my host. A boy crawled into a jacuzzi with me, and there really wasn’t room for him, but then Bob Dylan arrived and started warming up with his band.

December 17 2022, 14:36

Chaotic reading

This morning there was a thin crust of snow on the ground. The car park was empty, and the lines were hidden, so I chose a spot near the meter and hoped.

December 17 2022, 10:44

Daily words

These daily words are a prayer of sorts to gods I cannot name.

December 15 2022, 13:25

Digest

A digest of tweets shaped only with line breaks from two weeks in December.

December 14 2022, 22:05

Website updates

I’ve made some tweaks to the styles and layout of this website. I’m thinking about the future.

November 06 2022, 19:10

The future of my online shizz

I don’t know what to do for the best with my social media. Twitter is all I have. Zuckerberg is worse than Musk in many ways, so I’m not going to those places. Mastodon is not a replacement for anything, it’s a unique flavour of online community that will take effort from everyone who goes there. Blogs are the obvious answer, but who will have the taste for that these days? It’s effort. Twitter removed the work of posting and consuming, a bit like fast food, and now we’re all a bit flabby and useless, technologically speaking.

November 01 2022, 20:11

Image of a wave

In my notebook this morning I was thinking about how tempting screens are. Just having one near me makes me want to look. Today it was a wall of water, either a tall wave viewed from a ship at sea, or a tsunami from shore, I couldn’t tell. It was mesmerising. I was mesmerised by a photo of a painting of a wave on my laptop screen, but the overwhelming fear and awe it created in me was real.

October 31 2022, 19:30

The most important thing to do is

It’s Halloween. My daughter had friends around for a spooky-themed tea, and now they’ve gone out to ask for treats. The door knocking has begun.

October 30 2022, 21:27

Microblogging

I tweet way too much. Longer form pieces go here or on Patreon. Recording the podcast was fun, but not structured enough to stay interesting. I still write in my notebook every day, but recently that’s been less creative writing and more organising the job move. It’s been an amazing year for my software career, but it’s driven my writing practice into a ditch. However, I am still rolling that boulder of a novel up the mountain.

July 23 2022, 06:00