I am an aspiring writer obsessed with reading books on how to write. The advice is remarkably consistent. Read constantly. Write constantly. Be true to yourself. Put your reader first. Produce sharp, focused prose with literary merit. I do none of these things and was downcast. 

So I took myself to the Waterstones in Gower Street. It’s huge, full of students with MacBooks, a cafe serving houmous and a Rymans in the basement. But, at heart, any good bookshop is a castle filled with stories. That afternoon, I stormed Waterstones for inspiration.


My quest began with the ground floor: self-help, bestsellers, and second-hand. I sidled past self-help. Marie Kondo’s ‘the Magic of Tidying’ looked at me askance. Kondo says you should only own things that truly bring you joy. Books often promise joy, but seldom deliver. Marie Kondo knew this. I knew this. Spouse knows this, and points it out. Lengthily. And yet the vintage section called me. The second-hand Penguins formed a battalion of orange-striped paperbacks, bearing witness to an age when all books looked like them and Dan Brown wasn’t a twinkle of a twinkle. 


A faded copy of ‘Flowers for Mrs Harris’ by John Gallico caught my eye. As I picked it up, my teenage heart bellowed in great joy. Leaving Mrs Harris here would cause me pain. Thankfully, I saw a copy of John Wyndham’s ‘Day of the Triffids,’ which Spouse would love, and might distract his eye from other purchases. Done.

Down to the basement then, where the biographies live. I searched for AA Gill’s autobiography. Since his death everywhere had sold out of everything he’d written, including Waterstones. Heart heavy, I trudged to the second floor, where the children’s books live. I lurked, flicking through picture-books for inspiration and competition-checking purposes. Muse satisfied, I mounted the ascent to the bookshop’s citadel. Up past the management textbooks, up past theology and foreign language , and, up, up, up to the relative peace and calm of the fifth floor. Few have the cardiovascular strength or motivation to go so high. But I went straight to the writing books in reference. Treasures lay there, including ‘How to Write Children’s Picture Books,’ and Stephen King’s ‘On Writing.’


My quest ended. I sat in a window-seated turret surveying my haul. Each book silently spoke to me. John Wyndham said I loved my husband. John Gallico said I love stories with a romantic flourish. Stephen King said I truly want to write, and ‘How to Write a Picturebook’ said I have a story to tell. Together they said that constantantly searching for my voice in other people’s pages wasn’t helping. I’d wanted to read the Gill autobiography because he too turned to writing late, and his weekly critiques of frivolous things gave me and millions more great joy. I knew now. Whether my prose were sharp, focused or entirely free of literary merit, the time had come to stop reading, and write.  This blog is where most of that output will fall, as we continue our voyage through the thousand things to do in London that, even now, cost under a tenner.

Find Gower Street Waterstones at 82 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6EQ.  

Opening hours, directions and details of literary events are here: https://www.waterstones.com/bookshops/gower-street