94 ratings | 79 reviews | avg rating:4.62

more photos (9)

P.J. MacNamara’s Followers (88)

P.J.’s Bookshelves

read (94)
currently-reading (1)
to-read (0)

P.J.’s Friends (346)

Courtney Perry

98,666 books | 1,050 friends

Tania

2,341 books | 1,141 friends

yun with books

853 books | 1,529 friends

Fictionophile

4,509 books | 3,550 friends

Barbara

3,217 books | 2,038 friends

Angelfire

1,774 books | 185 friends

Brittney Rae

948 books | 270 friends

Maureen

2,253 books | 2,611 friends

More friends…

P.J. MacNamara

Goodreads Author

Born

in Manchester, The United Kingdom

Website

https://www.facebook.com/Man-Struggling-With-Um...

Twitter

https://twitter.com/PjMacnamara

Genre

Fantasy, Biography, Philosophy

Influences

Music, film, radio drama, stand-up, improv, maps, poetry, modern art, ...more

Member Since

November 2020

edit data

I've not written in the 3rd person since I was a schoolboy 40 years ago. It always struck me as old fashioned, restrictive and pedestrian. I started out as a poet, and though I haven't written a poem since the 1980s because I simply can't, I still think like a poet, and I still see that same value and wonder in the careful harnessing of language that only poets seem to see.

In my lifetime, the idea that, in literary terms at least, words are only of use if they can be beaten into conventional story patterns has become all-prevailing. Sadly, I imagine this is a natural extension to the notion that words only have real value if they translate into numbers for your bank account.

I've never been "in it for the money", or even for "the glory", if
I've not written in the 3rd person since I was a schoolboy 40 years ago. It always struck me as old fashioned, restrictive and pedestrian. I started out as a poet, and though I haven't written a poem since the 1980s because I simply can't, I still think like a poet, and I still see that same value and wonder in the careful harnessing of language that only poets seem to see.

In my lifetime, the idea that, in literary terms at least, words are only of use if they can be beaten into conventional story patterns has become all-prevailing. Sadly, I imagine this is a natural extension to the notion that words only have real value if they translate into numbers for your bank account.

I've never been "in it for the money", or even for "the glory", if there is actually any glory as such to be got. I've been in it for my own reasons. Duty was the first of those reasons. Noblesse oblige, you might call it, because once I'd discovered that I had a genuine literary talent I felt duty bound to exercise it, even though I never really got much pleasure from writing. Secondly there was an enormous, unfathomable part of myself that desperately wanted to be understood by somebody (but not just anybody). Thirdly, and primarily however, I wanted to explore with my words. I wanted to see what was actually possible. I wanted to do the impossible, to plant my flag at the summit of that mountain, or at the very least make it appear that I had done so. I wanted to free all those beautiful words from the banal, routine, conventional tyranny, from the fate worse than death that was the well-trodden path. I wanted to do the unexpected, the experimental, to say no to storytelling, to plot, to characters, to settings, to structure, to break down and dissolve barriers wherever I could and open up a realm of thrilling possibilities nobody else seemed to have noticed. My early efforts in those directions were over the years eclipsed many times and I like to think that I ultimately achieved all of my literary objectives to my personal satisfaction one way or another. But what to do with the end products..? You may find this hard to believe, but for many years after my early rejections that rarely crossed my mind. I pretty much gave up writing at the end of 2014 and didn't really start to pick up the pieces and try to put them together until five years later.

To be a poet is to be an artist. To be any other kind of a writer is to be a craftsman. Craft can be learned, and some craftsmen are better at their job than others. Art is not a job. It is a way of connecting with the collective unconscious and attempting to translate what One finds there into a language the people around us can understand. If an artist can entertain sometimes without compromising his principles he is happy to do so, but he is not an entertainer.

We artists do not always succeed in our aims, but all of our failures are noble ones, and we are happy to die poor if it means we have managed to touch the infinite once or twice somewhere along our difficult path.

In the foreword of MAN STRUGGLING WITH UMBRELLA I liken my books metaphorically to a series of archaeological digs. You start out knowing nothing. Seemingly unconnected relics are discovered and the reader has to start putting them together like a jigsaw puzzle. Every book in the series represents a new layer of discovery and brings with it certain revelations, but the whole truth will never be known. There will always be gaps that the archaeologist / reader has to fill with their own suppositions. I don't know if anyone has ever presented a series of books this way before, but it was always my intention to attempt something radically different to what people are used to, and though this Legacy Series is far removed from what I originally had in mind, it still ticks that box.

Dreams. Reincarnation. Deja vu. Creativity. Insanity. Love. Fate. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll learn something. ...more

Learn more
Ask the Author

To ask P.J. MacNamara questions, please sign up.

Popular Answered Questions

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but I heard some years ago that the USA represented HALF of the world market for all entertainment products. That's probably as good a reason as any to put American characters in your book and set some of the story in the USA. I'm not criticising you, but I suspect that this first book represents just the tip of your American Iceberg. Do you have anything to say on this subject?

P.J. MacNamara There is something in what you say, to be sure, but I'm not quite that cynical. Just as important in my thinking were the size of the US population an…moreThere is something in what you say, to be sure, but I'm not quite that cynical. Just as important in my thinking were the size of the US population and the fact that practically all Americans speak English. As two of my leads are English and the third is a multi-lingual Brazilian, I needed fellow English speakers for them to interact with. Every time they went to a country where English wasn't spoken I found myself summarising instead of playing out scenes. It became tiresome and predictable. In due course I settled for three power blocks, one in the UK, one in the USA and one in Japan, with a few non-affiliated persons floating around in between. The USA group self-destructed early on but I saw to it that there were a few random survivors scattered across the globe. I managed to wangle it somehow that the Japanese group mostly spoke English too, if and when they did actually speak. (less)

flag

like
Comment

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

P.J. MacNamara This is a tough question. I've been writing since 1983 and, apart from a couple of poems in the 1980s, I've never had anything published until now. I …moreThis is a tough question. I've been writing since 1983 and, apart from a couple of poems in the 1980s, I've never had anything published until now. I have perhaps been too unwilling to compromise, And I have definitely not submitted frequently enough because I find it very irksome when an agent hangs on to your work for nearly three months and then rejects it without a single word of explanation. Having said that, if I hadn't been snubbed and had the door slammed in my face so many times I never would have set myself the task I did. I went from poetry to songs to screenwriting to non-fiction, dipping into prose several times along the way, trying to second guess the market to some extent, trying to give them what they seemed to want without completely sacrificing my artistic visions, and it was only when I completely failed at everything and convinced myself (partially) that I really didn't care whether my work was ever read, let alone recognised by the world at large, only when I forgot about all the petty, annoying "rules" I'd been trying to follow, that I came up with something really original that I was really proud of and is now finally going to be available for real people to buy in real shops.

Does that actually count as advice? Perhaps not. So I'll end with this, that definitely is: Unless you have good reason to believe you are accidentally duplicating another author's work, don't take too much notice of what other people in your field are doing. If you're not careful you'll do a lot more reading than writing and you'll get so paranoid and depressed you ultimately might not want to write at all. There is a lot of competition out there, but THERE IS ONLY ONE YOU. You are unique, and somehow you need to turn that to your advantage.(less)

flag

like
Comment

See all 15 answers from P.J. MacNamara…

Combine Editions
P.J. MacNamara’s books

Average rating: 4.08 · 26 ratings · 9 reviews · 1 distinct work

Man Struggling With Umbrella

4.08 avg rating — 26 ratings — 3 editions

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

27 posts
P.J. MacNamara's Blog

Graphic Novels anybody...?

Over the last couple of weeks I have been trying to interest various parties in the idea of turning the last 35 pages of my book MAN STRUGGLING WITH UMBRELLA into a TV series. It's a kind of anthology that ends with the companion pieces in question, namely "The Protected Area" and "Seen But Not Seen". Suddenly it struck me just now that they would also be perfect for adaptation into a series of GR Read more of this blog post »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 20, 2021 14:44

View all 27 posts »

P.J. is Currently Reading

P.J. MacNamara is currently reading

The Talkies: Articles and Illustrations from Photoplay Magazine, 1928-1940

by Richard Griffith

bookshelves: currently-reading

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

P.J. MacNamara said: " This is currently my favourite book. I've bought a lot of vintage cinema books online this year, mostly very cheaply second hand, and that generally means you can't be sure you're going to like what lands on your doorstep, but generally these books a ...more "

Aug 01, 2022 11:26AM · see review

rss
P.J.’s Recent Updates

P.J. MacNamara is now friends with Javi Malaver
Sep 21, 2023 04:21AM · like
P.J. MacNamara voted on a poll Do you think that by reading a book we can find out the personality of its author? They voted for: No
Sep 16, 2022 01:36PM · like · take the poll
P.J. MacNamara made a comment on the poll: Do you think that by reading a book we can find out the personality of its author? " It very much depends on the author. Some go to great length to distance themselves from works of fiction as much as possible and then perhaps reveal m ...more "
Sep 16, 2022 01:34PM

More of P.J.'s books…

Quotes by P.J. MacNamara (?)

“The C part is in here and it wants to play. Do you want to see it? Or are you going to pussy out on me again?"

This quote is taken from "As Easy As ABC", written in 2014, scheduled to be included in the as yet unpublished 3rd book of the Killing Time Legacy Series (expected c.2023).”
― P.J. MacNamara

tags: empowerment, enigmatic, innuendo, play-on-words, strong-female-characters

4 likes

“Those who have flesh and blood children but have never created anything artistically can never appreciate what the fruit of a childless author's "womb" can mean to him. The book is often as much a product of the heart and the soul as it is of the mind, it has quite likely been many years in the making, and though the author knows that one day his offspring will have to make its own way in a cruel world that can never appreciate it as he does, he also knows that, for as long as he lives, it is his solemn duty to watch over it, pick it up when it falls down, and shelter it from the worst of any storm. To do any less would be to fail publicly as a parent.

The new born book is a helpless child. The "father" may not recognise it as his own, or even know that it exists.”
― P.J. MacNamara

tags: creativity, parenting, the-heart, the-muse, the-soul

3 likes