My New Year’s resolution was intended to kill two bird with one stone: bury the hatchet on my previous attempts at writing fiction; and to really give my best shot at writing a brand new great novel.

I already had a plot idea about a brave young American woman called Karen who was the survivor of an abusive relationship involving her crazy grandfather who himself was a victim of his immigrant past.

As a rule of thumb, it seemed to contain most of the ingredients required for a modern bestseller.  I thought that it had the potential to be my seminal work.

However, before I started writing, I decided to have a pow wow with the guys at Stanford University, since they are the acknowledged gurus when it comes to language, having practically written the white paper on the subject.

And, was I glad that I did?  One look at their Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative website, and I came to the conclusion that I was beating a dead horse when it came to my new book.  I decided to abort the novel straight off.  Better now than before I got too addicted with the idea.

I’ve decided to ditch the sequel, too.  That was going to be about a tone deaf former prisoner of war who becomes a pilot only for his plane to crash and his story to be told via the aircraft’s black box flight recorder.

© Fergus Longfellow

Fergus Longfellow stops writing before he is blackballed.