When I took on the project of writing a book about dad I had a single aspiration: I wanted people to feel as if they had actually met my father after reading it.
But how to capture in words the complex, unconventional and humorous man that I knew?
Not an easy task!
At the outset of the writing process, I brought to mind some advice that dad once gave me:
“With any project, the vital thing is that you just make a start on it – any kind of start will do, really. Don’t delay, thinking that you’ve got to have every detail figured out first, you can always adjust your course once you’re underway. Overcoming the initial inertia at the start is the hardest part and it’s where most people get stuck.”
Heeding dad’s words, I began jotting down everything I could think of that seemed relevant, pouring it all out without any kind of editorial filter.
For three months I kept up a daily routine of writing for an hour or two after work in either Morrisons or Sainsburys cafes in Kendal (thank you to the staff at those establishments). Three full notebooks of scribblings later, and I had my first, (very) rough draft of the book.
In the six years since then, I have worked on the project both full and part-time, editing, researching and refining the narrative – and I’ve enjoyed every minute!
In total, I have ended up with 148,000 words – on the long side for a memoir, perhaps, but not outlandish. Partly for this reason I have chosen to split the book into two, with the first section being more biographical in style.
Given that I first appear in dad’s life when he is already 54, it seems appropriate that I treat the huge portion of his life before I knew him as a biography.
The second division of the book covers dad’s life with us, his second family, and more closely resembles a personal memoir.
This difference in styles is not absolute, and towards the end of the first book it is increasingly becoming a memoir as my half-siblings have been very generous in sharing their personal memories of dad. So, the change in tone is well under way before I make my grand entrance into dad’s story!
© Kathleen Fisher
Chapter Listing
Book One: Biography (1918-70)
- Setting The World On Fire
- The Railway Carriage
- Leitmotifs
- War
- Kingfisher
- Above The Laundrette
- Epicyclics
- Hitting The Big Time
- The Juggernaut
- Turmoil
Book Two: Memoir (1970-2002)
- To Grab A Tiger By The Tail
- A Second Bite At The Apple
- The Bishop
- The Laboratory Of Life
- Invention
- Cyclex
- Ruin
- Return
- The Adventure Of Life
- Wealth And Health
- The Pathless Land
- Universal Acid
- A Brush With Mortality
- The Fire Sermon
- Role Reversal
- The Twilight Of The Gods.
To be continued…..!
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2 responses to “The Book”
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I remember being at the sale of your Dads business at Catherinefield Ind Est. We own an engineering business five miles along the road and bought a shelving unit full of nuts and bolts. I owned a tractor at the time and shifted a forklift from Catherinefield factory for a friend who had bought it.
I remember my dad talking to your dad, it was so sad to see the factory shutting down.
The thing however which made the greatest impression on me was a kind of carousel unit for assembling and glueing the toys together. The auctioneer or whoever was clearing the place so, stuck the carousel onto my trailer just to tidy up the factory and it lay at our works for many years rusting. It made a big impression on me as a young engineer, it was simply a work of art, I think it was basically a rotary station for six or so workers to sit at and assemble the toys, I remember vividly there was a station which had lots of steel pins which came down into a pot of glue then up and when they came down again they placed a tiny amount of glue from each pin onto the inside of the toy casing for it to be glued together. Your father must have been and engineering genius, no CAD systems then to design it.Our own company has just turned 100 years old and I wrote a book although I don’t think I’ll have quite the number of words you have. We are into heavy engineering and I’m the mad inventor of the business (not in your fathers league) which is now run by my son.
I don’t have any other memories of your father other than the sale and the carousel which lay outside at the back of our works for years.
best regards,
Doug Clark
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Hi Doug – thanks so much for getting in touch! Yes, that was a sad moment in many ways, but life goes on and once dad had got over that very heavy knock we moved to the Lake District and dad got himself very fit again walking in the hills. In time, the toy companies came calling, and dad worked as a consultant for them until he retired aged 80. He was still inventing even then, and this rotary station that you mention brings back very vague memories for me. As you say, his engineering was a sight to behold and it’s wonderful that he made a positive impression on so many people. That’s great that you’ve written your book – as one writer to another it’s quite a process, isn’t it? I just hope I’ve done dad justice in my book – he was a larger than life character and it was not easy to capture his uniqueness in words.
With best regards,
Duncan
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