What’s the Story Here?

Writing isn’t simply what I do. It’s how I make sense of the world.

I’ve written books, articles, interviews, speeches and communications for organisations. I’ve written about football and history, places and people, leadership and identity. Some of that writing has been commissioned. Some of it has been published. Some of it has simply begun with something I couldn’t stop thinking about.

The subjects change. The question behind them rarely does:

What’s the story here?

It’s a question I find myself asking constantly. Sometimes the answer is obvious. Sometimes the interesting story is hiding beneath the one everybody thinks they already know. And sometimes it begins with nothing more significant than a conversation, a place, a book or an observation which nags away until I realise there’s something more to it. That, increasingly, is what I think writing is about: paying attention.

An ongoing notebook

That’s also what I want this Journal to be. Not a news feed. Not a content machine. And certainly not a collection of articles written because a search engine has decided somebody ought to write them. Think of it instead as an ongoing notebook: a place for essays, observations and longer pieces which reward curiosity.

Some will be about storytelling and communication. Others about football, heritage or history. There will be books, writing and publishing. There will probably be pieces about leadership, belonging and the stories organisations tell about themselves.

Some pieces will be personal. Some practical. Others may simply capture an idea I think is worth exploring. I don't expect everything to fit neatly into a category. In fact, I'm rather hoping it doesn't. Because the interesting stuff often happens at the edges, where one subject unexpectedly collides with another.

Following the thread

I’ve always been fascinated by those connections. A book leads to another book. A football story turns out to be a story about identity. A place reveals something about the people who built it. An apparently insignificant detail opens a door onto a much bigger subject. You follow the thread and see where it takes you.

That is one of the great pleasures of writing. You don't necessarily know what you think when you begin. The act of writing is partly how you find out. And perhaps that is why I’ve kept doing it.

Long before this website existed, I was writing online. Over the years, Paint This Town Red became home to hundreds of posts covering writing, publishing, football, communications, interviews, book reviews, speaking engagements and the creative process itself.

Looking back through it now is a slightly strange experience. It isn't simply an archive of things I've written. It charts changes in interests, ideas and circumstances. In its own untidy way, it records an evolution.

This Journal continues that process. I don't particularly want it to become more polished content. There is quite enough content in the world already. I'd rather it contained writing worth spending a little time with.

Why keep writing?

Because stories are never really finished.

Every conversation changes your perspective slightly. Every project teaches you something. Every book leads somewhere else. Places change. People change. And sometimes you return to something you thought you understood and discover that you see it completely differently.

Writing gives me somewhere to put those discoveries. It makes me stop and look properly.

And in a world which increasingly encourages us to scroll past everything at speed, perhaps there is something worthwhile about doing precisely the opposite: stopping, noticing, following an idea and seeing where it leads.

That's what I want to do here.

There will be football. There will be books. There will be stories about places, people, writing and work. There will almost certainly be occasional diversions down paths I hadn't intended to follow.

Good. That's rather the point. Because wherever these pieces begin, I'll probably still be asking the same question:

What's the story here?