More money

More on the line, ‘I got some more of my moneys worth of the carpet…’

Writer Danny King (author of many crime fiction novels and the BBC sitcom Thieves Like Us) emailed the following;

'I guess, without knowing the overall context of the piece it was lifted from, it could be construed several ways. Sexually, it could be a tenuous rug munching reference, or literally, it could mean the guy indulged in a spot of pacing backwards and forwards. If that's the case, I don't think it's too much of a stretch of the imagination. When me and my mates are parking our cars badly and rolling backwards and forwards repeatedly, we refer to it as wearing out the tarmac, and it's the same sort of thing.

Personally, I'm not a great believer in everyone having to understand everything. Why get held back by the lowest common denominator. Let them play catch up and figure it out. If you're not learning something new when you read a book, what's the point?

Also, not everything has to make sense. Some times languages and phrases just sound nice for the sake of sounding nice, without actually meaning anything.

I wrote that one of my characters was as "drunk as a Spanish elephant" once and it doesn't actually [strictly] mean anything, but it gives the reader a sense of what was up with the guy and hopefully felt as satisfying to read as it felt to write, so I left it in.

And lastly, even if you spelt everything out, even if you stuck to Janet & John and ABC and played it safe the rest of your writing life, it wouldn't matter because people (and often educated people like your tutor) will read a load of crap into your writing that's not even there, often in an attempt to sound more intelligent than they are. I saw a review for School for Scumbags once that called it an: "entertaining first person satire that rips the skin off those whose solution to everything is out of sight out of mind storage that has made the private prison industry a wealthy service entity." continuing if was for fans who: "appreciate an amusing lampooning of society."

This is very complementary but a complete load of tosh. It's not a satire at all and was never intended to be in any way, shape or form. And the reviewer (who is Amazon.com's number 1 reviewer) is in no position to disagree with my assessment because I wrote the fucking thing so I should know, shouldn't I?'

So there we have it. Lot’s of interesting points, which he rounded up by adding;

‘It's your writing. If you like and understand it, be confident enough to use it. But, by that same token, don't go forgetting your reader either.’

The line stays in, albeit with David Crystal’s grammatical suggestion.

As planned I wrote 500 words today – these were for the fourth chapter.