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What Ever Happened to What I Wrote
Patchwork of a writing life: part two
PAUL K. LYONS
Introduction
1 Adam Co-op
An idiosyncratic way of parenting
2 The Office
Success, fraud, failure
3 Evolution
In thrall to natural science
4 EC INFORM
A business of my own
5 Adam
The joys and privileges of fatherhood
6 Music
Where life is better
7 Health
To balance mind and body
8 Fiction
Yah boo sucks, you agents, you publishers!
9 Diary
Five million words long, deep, wide
10 Kip Fenn
Magnum opus or white elephant?
From his early 20s, Paul K. Lyons was keen to become a ‘writer’. And a writer he became, writing, writing, writing, not just his day-job journalism or his diary (though he produced millions of words for both), but a multitude of stories for his son Adam, non-fiction projects, novels and short story collections. So then what did happen to all that writing?
As with his first memoir (Why Ever Did I Want to Write), Lyons takes an unconventional approach to answer his own question. Using a patchwork of themed chapters, he focuses one by one on different aspects of his life and writings – with the diary serving not only as a matchless resource but as a guide too. He examines his role as a parent within, what he calls, the Adam Co-op, bringing a self-critical analysis to the ups and downs, joys and fears, responsibilities and privileges of fatherhood. He retraces the way of his journalistic writing career, first as an editor in the Financial Times Group and then launching and running his own business – producing newsletters and books on European Community policies in energy and transport.
Chapters on his intellectual relationship with science (including an MSc on paternal care in primates!) and his atonal love affair with music are typical of Lyons’s offbeat approach to Life Writing; as is the forensic way he looks at the how, what and why of his own diary keeping life.