I may have mentioned previously my ambition to write the Great American Novel. I just wanted to bring you up to date. I’ve finally abandoned that ambition, because I’ve made a shocking discovery.

I naturally assumed that eligibility for writing the GAN followed the same rules as eligibility for the American Presidency. “In America, anyone can become president.” (Incidentally, I like George Carlin’s take on that: “In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem.” However, I think Adlai Stevenson’s wry comment is even better: “In America, anyone can become president. That’s one of the risks you take.”)

I now discover that, all these years, I’ve been taken in by that grand statement: “In America, anyone can become president” (or, indeed, write the GAN). There was I thinking to myself: “Fair enough! I’ll get an idea for a novel, go to America, write it, and Bob Louis Stevenson’s your uncle.” Turns out that I really should have read the small print, which states: “…a presidential candidate must be a natural born citizen of the United States, a resident for 14 years, and 35 years of age or older.”

I checked up, and apparently double credit for one of those three qualifications can’t be used to cancel out another, so my 70+ years don’t help me get over the hurdle of “natural born citizen”, even if I were prepared to live in America for 14 years (and if that’s not suffering for one’s art, I don’t know what is).

So, assuming the same rules apply for the GAN as for POTUS, I’m scuppered. This seems very unfair. After all, we Englishmen have always been very ready to celebrate such great English authors and playwrights as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Jonathan Swift. We have never held their accident of birth against them.

I must confess that I find this situation very confusing. In my heart of hearts, I never really believed I would write the GAN, but until now I always assumed there was a completely different reason why this was so.

All my thinking life (I leave my readers to decide how long a period of time that may have been), I have looked at novelists with a mixture of puzzlement and awe. I know we always say that not all fiction is strictly autobiographical, but surely that’s a…. fiction. And when authors are not trawling their own psyche to animate their characters, they are pilfering personality traits and mannerisms from all their nearest and dearest.

I have never understood how novelists could dare to bare their souls, expose their foibles, and betray the confidences of their family and friends. Where did Philip Roth, for example, find the courage to write Portnoy’s Complaint, knowing that, in all probability, nobody would ever be prepared to shake hands with him again? Can you imagine his first visit to his parents after they read the novel?

A considerable chunk of my leisure time over the last five decades has been spent contemplating writing fiction. It strikes me that, if I’d put half the effort into writing that I’ve put into thinking about it, and avoiding doing it, the world (or, at least, my filing cabinet drawers) would be richer by several execrable novels and a couple of slim volumes of unreadable poetry.

What has always held me back has been an almost total lack of self-belief. A few of you, who really know me, will not be at all phased to read that last sentence. I suspect, however, that many of you will be rather surprised. I offer in evidence of my condition this song by Flanders and Swann, whom I haven’t referenced in far too long.

This lack of self-belief is not a sound basis on which to build a career as a writer, for two reasons. First, I find it very difficult to believe that anyone will be the least interested in what I have to write. (I often don’t think I’ll be all that interested myself.) I am repeatedly amazed when friends tell me they enjoyed my last post or article for the shul magazine. (Amazed and delighted, so don’t feel you need to stop telling me.)

Secondly, I felt really uncomfortable exposing myself to my readers, and lacked the self-confidence to write only for myself, not really caring how others would receive it.

Careful readers may have noticed the shift in verb tense over those last two paragraphs, from present to past. The surprise is something I still experience every week; the discomfort is now almost completely behind me. The fact is that, to my absolute astonishment, I have found, over the 17 months that I have been writing this blog, that I have become more and more freely able to talk about my innermost thoughts and feelings.

Of course, almost all of the time I write about these things in a flippant tone; but I have long warned people that the things I discuss seriously seldom mean very much to me, but the things I joke about are the ones I really care about. So don’t let the lightness of touch fool you.

Several times over the last months, I have finished writing and editing a post, and then read it through one final time and been amazed that not only do I think it’s not half bad, but in addition I am comfortable about sharing all this with what may not be a large readership, but, more tellingly, is exclusively not an anonymous readership. I find myself wondering how it is that I am comfortable with this.

When I put that question to Esther, she said that she felt this simply reflected a change that I have undergone over the last eight years. Esther and Micha’el are both convinced that my diagnosis of bladder cancer caused me to reflect and recalibrate in all sorts of areas, and that feeling more comfortable with myself is part of this change.

I don’t reject that idea, but I also have been wondering whether something in the medium itself encourages this openness. This blog is a complex thing. On the one hand, I can reach a large audience immediately and effortlessly; composing and posting the blog could hardly be easier. At the same time, the medium makes the entire process remarkably impersonal, sterile. There is no personal contact; indeed, my readership is completely invisible to me. I suspect that there is something of the church confessional in this setup: author and reader are each isolated in their own cell; the grille between them allows the message to be transmitted, but prevents any other contact.

I find that there is also, in this experience, something of diving into a swimming pool on a cool day. Getting in is not easy, but once you are in, it quickly becomes comfortable. Every week, clicking the Publish button takes a little effort: there’s always a moment’s hesitation, as I stand at the end of the diving board. However, by the time the first reaction comes back, I’m feeling much more at ease.

So, please keep those reactions coming, and I’ll do my best to keep up this dance of the seven hundred veils.

Meanwhile, some people are engaged in much more healthy and much less cerebrally complicated outdoor pursuits. I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t lent Micha’el my copy of the novel Holes. It would be child slavery if Tao didn’t beg to be allowed to help.