I used to have to trick ideas out of me. Say I had a funding application to write but it was missing the interesting thing that would set it apart from the others, and actually, more than standing out, this was an opportunity to be creative so I should do the work of creativity; I should have an idea. I would sit at my desk and wait for a very long time, but that was always a waste. I had to give up before it ever happened.

I would walk to the bus stop on my way to see a friend and the rote performance of eyeliner and money and keys would displace me enough that an idea would surprise me. I’d have to get my phone out fast to make a note of it. Miss the bus because I had my head down, not my arm out. And it’s been that way for years. I’ll put my laptop away and knit a row. I’ll play ranked on Overwatch. I’ll finally put the washing away. I just have to look left so that an idea can tap me on the shoulder from my right.

But last month I began writing a new book and I’m not having to do any of this coaxing. The ideas are coming in thick, against my will, demanding my attention with the cheek of notifications. It feels good, if a bit much, because this new book is there in front of everything else. The book is knocking on the door at 10 at night and pushing past me before I’ve decided whether I want to let it in. And I don’t know if it’s because it’s my first time writing total fiction instead of the usual art criticism, or if it’s because it’s about something that happened 17 years ago so I’ve always known it, always thought about it, and now I’m just writing it down — but I am dreaming in scenes. I roll over in bed and tell my boyfriend about the seven new episodes I just watched like I’m recommending a TV series.

Yeah, I can’t really think of anything else. I can’t really think about this review. I can’t be putting all my best writing here, when I could be helping chapter 4 take shape. But if I hold myself still for a minute, like a kid made to present something to the class, I would say this: in the deluge, creativity is less in generating the writing and more in the work of organising all the ideas I have accumulated. I am in the sorting office. I need to figure out how all of this is going to come together in the form of a book.

So when I’m not writing, I’ve reading. The stories I like best tend to be quick reads that don’t lose anything with their weight, but really seem to work because the writer is keeping up a certain pace, and we’re forced to keep up with them, all of us are tripping down a hill together at full pelt, possibly kidnapped, while they’re telling us there’s no time to breathe, no need to blink, no chance to stop.

The last time I felt that rush was reading R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface. It’s about a white writer who steals her dead Chinese-American friend’s manuscript, publishes it as her own, and basically pretends to be Asian to suit the story she wrote. Rapt by pure gossip, I fell into the ‘I can’t go to sleep until I’ve read one more chapter’ paradox, so that I didn’t sleep until the whole thing was done. Culture is a thing I choose to partake in, and pause, and give up on, but Yellowface didn’t give me a choice. I think that is so powerful. I can only hope to be that entertaining.

So when I saw Kuang had a new fantasy book out, I decided to read the very long Katabasis to study how the author puts her ideas in order, especially when she’s speaking in another genre. It’s no great loss but I could have given up on this one. The story follows two post-grad students adventuring to hell to retrieve their recently deceased advisor, because if he’s dead they can’t get the recommendations they need for jobs and shit. I just wish this was more satirical than it came off.

The obsessive romanticisation of Cambridge University was too Caroline Calloway for my cringe-threshold. The constant but brief referencing of philosophers was kind of fine, though maybe it meant there were too many of other people’s ideas, and actually, all together it read like Sophie’s World for the short form video content era (and its short form thoughts as well). More educational than dramatic.

The characters in this book are at Cambridge to study the kind of magic that ends with a k, which was done with the cleverness of good game mechanics; but all that cleverness lacked application, so it was like someone having a sports car outside their house and never ever driving it. Sitting on occasion in the front seat, but keeping the key in their pocket.

Still, no great loss because I’m reading for research, not pleasure, and it’s useful to consider what about it I didn’t enjoy. For the most part, the book reminded me how much fiction is just a case of: ‘here’s the main character, oh no, now they’ve been backed into a corner! How will they ever get out? Okay so they’re free again, but now they’re in a trap. How will they ever escape? They got out.’ And it goes on like that until the biggest cage falls down over their head, followed by the best getaway so far, and then the story is over.

When it’s done well, that’s the kind of rollercoaster writing that stops me from sleeping because I can’t wait to see what happens. I feel the peril and then I earn the relief. And then I find I want a bit more peril, because that was quite fun actually, and so on. Katabasis set plenty of traps for its characters but they were paper cups over rats. It made me think that writers of this kind of stuff also need to set traps for their readers. It never got me. I just watched from a distance as the author hit all her marks, but I wished she would break out of the routine to surprise me.

I walked and at times I did a vague jog to keep up, but it never made me trip. I should have reread Yellowface maybe? I still can. But not right now. Ideas are interrupting even this small text. When I close this document to go back to the other one, I will be wary of those routines though. I’ll think about the experience I want to put the wild reader through, not just the fictional characters I so easily control. I hope so hard that I can get this right so the reader can see what it’s like inside my TV dreams.

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