Challenges...

You’ve probably noticed this, frankly I’d be surprised if you haven’t, but I’ll say it anyway: Why has the media become so obsessed with challenges?

I’m not talking about challenges like scaling Everest or searching out the source of the Amazon. I’m not even thinking about the challenge of trying to get a parking space within a mile of a supermarket entrance if you’re not disabled.

I’m talking about the artificial obstacles that are considered critical for a challenge to be interesting. Take the X Factor, for example.

It’s a music competition, that’s what it is. People sing, lobotomised people vote, and the winner with the biggest dream, who always wanted it, wins. To eek it out over the 2/3rds of the year its on they have to come through rounds. Fair enough.

But to make it even more interesting to its viewing public (who, lets face it, would find The Sky at Night interesting if they could vote off a planet each week) some of the contestants have an unseemingly impossible obstacle to overcome – like coming from Northern Ireland, or voluntarily taking drugs. Come on, its not their fault.

While I’m on the subject of the X Factor, do me a favour – consider the maths. Nearly a million people turned up for auditions. Did the judges watch every act? Get real. They saw the ones they wanted to see – those that would fit into the tightly scripted format of the show. The Mousetrap has more spontaneity in it.

Anyway I digress. The reason I’m heading towards the New Year with a rant is this false sense of challenge is becoming a mainstay of travel books. It is not sufficiently interesting to read about someone travelling around Ireland – they have to be towing a fridge. I’m not having a go at Tony Hawks who did the towing, but why did he follow it up with trying to get a piano to his house in France? Would he indeed have bothered with the piano move at all if he didn’t think there was sufficient challenge in it to fill a book? For me the piano was the most irritating part of the book. I suspect his publishers - flogging a winning formula until its so mind numbingly boring you’ll only find it in a pound shop is a common theme.

Why do publishers get so obsessed with the need for a spurious challenge? Even Slash, my editor wanted to know what my hook was.

‘There isn’t one. It’s about the journey.’

‘Mmm… he said, rubbing his chin and drinking another glass of Rioja (which is quite a skill). ‘No hook eh?...’

Bill Bryson went around Britain on public transport. Some may say that that in itself must have been some challenge, but he didn’t tow anything. Eric Newby got up one day and took a short walk in the Hindu Kush. And he managed it without a piano. Paul Theroux jumped on a train in America and got off in Patagonia. In between he chatted to a few people, contemplated his naval, and looked out of the window. It was a brilliant book.

The great thing about all these wonderful books is that the challenges are all do-able. Anyone could, with a little effort admittedly, experience the written page in real living Technicolour.

The journey is not the challenge at all. The challenge is holding your readers’ attention for 200 plus pages.

This brings me to my challenge. I lost over 30,000 words of my book just before Christmas. Now this next statement might sound a little dramatic to you, but I assure you its true: it was like bereavement. And I don’t mean to belittle anyone who’s suffered a loss this year (you know who you), but the truth is I hadn’t realised how emotionally attached I’ve become to my book.

Anyway, after a Herculean effort I’ve recovered the missing words – manually – by re-writing them, and I am now back to the point at which I lost most of my book – the gobbing restaurant.

It meant writing 5000 words at each writing session- that’s about 15 pages of a book each day. Doesn’t sound much? Try it – now that’s a real challenge…