I’m going to lay down a marker: I’m writing a book, and the title is “Single”. I’ve been wanting to write about what I’ve experienced in life, but I’ve struggled to find a unique theme.
Now I’ve realised that my almost lifelong singleness - punctuated by a bad marriage - is the most dominant, surprising, and unwanted thing in my life. It has to be written, because I can’t stop writing it. It doesn’t matter if it ever reaches publication, it doesn’t matter if it ever makes any money, it doesn’t even matter if I get any readers. I can no more stop writing this than I can stop eating. And regular readers of the Substack can attest to the fact that the content is coming thick and fast, probably faster than they can keep up.
Aside from that, there is another good and perhaps necessary reason to write it: my story might be surprising, but my circumstances are far from unique. Singleness is a growing plague on society. In the UK and the US, 28–30% of people over fifty are single, whilst record numbers of younger people are failing to get married and failing to have children. Singleness is strongly correlated to bad health outcomes and shorter lifespans. Many years of human life are being lost to singleness, and if we don’t reproduce, then our society is over. It’s something that should be explored, and I find myself in a position to do so. So I must.
This may not be a typical “book”, in format. Typically, a book is the tangible result of years of hidden work. There will be drafts and rewrites, authors might have a change of heart, find new directions, and readers won’t see any of that. Is that a good thing, or merely the result of the format, of ink on paper? Could the process, if it was visible, actually be part of the product? I think so. So, for now at least, this is something that will only be found right here, on Substack. So this is a launch, in that this is where the journey begins, not where it ends.
