What makes a writer write? I imagine the complete answer is different for each individual writer. Many of the reasons probably fall into the category of not wanting to do a proper job, craving attention, a genuine belief in the earth-shattering importance of the last thing they’ve thought about. But there will be a great patchwork swathe of unpredictable personal ones, too.

For me, it’s not big ideas that inspire. Almost everything I have written has grown from a tiny beginning, a fleeting moment that doesn’t just fleet by like the others, but leaves a mark. Clearly not every moment can fall into that category. Otherwise real life would be totally drowned out amongst developing and competing fantasies, and that would be dreadful. Wouldn’t it?

But. The moments that do have that special hook… Do they share a common characteristic? I think they probably do. Almost all those that I can identify as the roots of my work have something. It seems insufficient to say that they all have potential: of course they all have potential. But what I mean is that there is something about each of those moments that convinces me there’s more hiding behind what it’s showing me. As if it’s taunting me with its apparent innocence, daring me to probe further.

If I look at them in some detail, it’s still not immediately obvious. I consider some of the things I’ve written and follow their development back to inception: a peculiar dream, one I could remember vividly, for a change, once awake; a disturbing experience on a tube; a prosaic act of tenderness on a tourist excursion; a conversation I couldn’t believe I was hearing (that gave rise to the latest published story, Infidelity); a real life work situation I couldn’t believe I had found my way into; a dissonant phrase. Where’s the link? But they do all share a vital property: each one is inherently absurd. Or at least coloured with the absurd, or even just open to suggestions from the absurd.

I honestly have no idea, but I imagine it’s a very similar story for all creative types: songwriters, artists, comedians. Possibly not everybody is hooked by absurdity: maybe it’s inequality, or heroism or something more deeply emotional. I expect they all have their own type of moment. I might miss theirs, and vice versa. But that’s how it should be, isn’t it?

Much of my life’s amusement comes from considering what leads others to do the same. I might read something like A Poor Aunt Story or Super-Frog Saves Tokyo by Murakami, Graham Greene’s The Destructors or Kurt Vonnegut’s Jenny and marvel at the possibilities behind how they came to be. Not what the stories might mean at an emotional or artistic level: the loneliness, the irony, the impotence; but why they grew up in the form they did. I love to picture Roald Dahl explaining to a young child exactly what goes into a sausage, and then finding himself unable to staunch his flow of the absurd and writing Pig. In a similar fashion, when reading Waterland by Graham Swift, I couldn’t get out of my head the image of the author finding a half-uncovered old beer bottle somewhere alongside a fenland channel, and letting it grow until it became the masterpiece it did. I genuinely hope this is how those works were born.

I’ve always seen absurdity as I’ve gone about life. In fact, I don’t see an awful lot else. It can be a problem for me when I’m trying to be sensible. And I’m convinced that’s what has led me to write. If I let the madness go unreported, I’ve not fulfilled my function on the planet. I suppose the paradox is that writing is a very solitary occupation, and the raw material is out there, jostling with all those real people, relationships and conversations in the big, bad world that I don’t like. But life is all about striking the right balance. And it’s raining today. Today is a day to write.