10 Across. Something new to read

In the days before blogging was even a twinkle in the internet's eye, I used to keep a journal. Interesting expression: 'keep' a journal. Why is it something you keep? Hmm, it's probably lost a previous meaning more akin to 'upkeep'. Sorry, tangent. I used to have a series of spiral-bound notebooks that I used to write stuff in. It wasn't great stuff. It was sort of free-form poetry, I guess, though calling it poetry was a bit of a stretch. It was sometimes personal but sometimes just complete random rubbish, such as this entry about mayonnaise.

I love the mayonnaise they have in England You just can't get the same stuff over here I love the way it blends right in with chicken Yum, yum.

Killer, huh? Sometimes, I'd be stuck for anything to write, so I used to look in books for little writing exercises. Fun and challenging things you could do to get the imagination lubed up and doing lubey things. Sorry, that sounds disgusting. I'll try to do better. Anyway, they were fun and sometimes I'd write something that would make me smile, or chuckle to myself. And that was enough because there was no comments box down the bottom; I only had myself to please. As I was sitting on the toilet taking a crap earlier, I was on a bizarre train of thought that travelled through the following places.

• I should really stay with my current employer for a few more years so I can get my long service leave
• What am I going to do on my long service leave? Shouldn't I have a project?
• I should write a novel on my long service leave
• I should be preparing ideas for the novel what I'm going to write during my long service leave
• How do you structure a novel?
• Narratives written in a purely linear structure are clichéd and often boring. Real life isn't linear, like a straight line; our lives intersect with each other in a complex, random and unpredictable fashion. Events themselves are not connected but are linked by meanings relative to our personal and collective experience. Life isn't a series of cause-and-effect happenings; sometimes our lives are just made up of stuff that happens. No characters should be two-dimensional. All people are complex individuals with their own hopes, dreams, motivations, fears and sexual preferences. People's real stories don't just bumble along from A to Z, there are intersections with other characters and events
• Real stories are more like crossroads
• No, they're like crossword puzzles
• Hey, yeah.. Crossword puzzles
• Let's see, every word is a person. Long words are main characters that span the length or height of the puzzle. Short words are minor characters. Where they cross, something happens between those two people. You can work from left to right, or from top to bottom, or from top-left to bottom-right
• My book could be called Times Cryptic N^o 4378
• You could write a series of novels named after different crosswords and you'd develop a cult following of people who look to the crossword for explanations of what's really going on in the book
• Let's refine this a bit. Every horizontal line is a character. Some characters last the length of the novel, others are there at the start, turn up again in the middle or at the end. Vertical lines are events that happen to the characters they intersect with. Some events happen to all characters at the same time; others happen to only a few, or even one
• You could use the words from the actual solution of the puzzle as themes, places or devices within the novel itself
• I should try to write a short story, as practice, using this approach

Now if I can only solve an entire Times Cryptic, I'll be ready for my long service leave. I have a few years up my sleeve. I'm sure to solve a whole one before then.