That isn't that impressive. Sure you *can* do it. Type a bunch of words, call it a novel. Nothing is proved by it.
OK. It's important to call out my bullshit. It's an exercise to see if I can, yes, but it's not just a bunch of words. I am trying to balance the various elements of the novel that need to be balanced. So it can't just be some random shit. And I suppose there is a general feeling I am trying to communicate. So it's not as easy as you say.

Oh fucking great, a novel that communicates a feeling.
It's important that lines of questioning don't close down any chance of the interviewee offering some small victory. Yeah, I am trying to communicate a feeling, or many of them wrapped up, amongst other things.

Like?
It's hard to stick a pin in it. My view of the novel is that it should always capture a 'true now' even if you set it in outer space in the future or a parallel earth in the past or whatever. For better or worse this is the last couple of years all rolled together. It might mean that it dates quickly but that's not a problem for me.

Is this a 'sad man' novel?
Erm. There's melancholy in it. I can't hide from that. I like Graham Swift and Stoner and I can't hide that the last two years have been a bit rough and that I am a man. I think there's some levity in there. I think. Maybe not enough.

So are you the main dude? There's a main dude isn't there? A sad main dude.
I'm not. But obviously I'm in there. More in the lack of control of his own life in the span of events, the inability to read the meaning though he understands the words. But some of it is funny, you're not meant to think he's brilliant or anything.

Is this a compendium of things you find distateful in real life made into a narrative where someone like you triumphs in the end?
No, fuck those books, they're the worst.

OK then. What is it about? Elevator pitch.
A young man is asked to go back to the place where he is from in Wales to observe (spy on, if you like) whether there is a terrorist threat toward their English neighbours.

OK so kind of like The Looking Glass War with a bit of Three Lions. Brilliant and original pal.
Bang to rights. Or not. I have to write on the assumption that the difference will be in the writing and the execution and not the details. Superficially it is about that, but it is just about precarity, transition, being a misfit, existing between history and present. You wouldn't understand, you're the deliberately crass version of me.

So let me get this straight: for a free novel you are writing about a general feel of the last two years and setting it in Wales.
Yes. And I don't think I'm going to mention COVID. The feel of the last two years has nothing to do with it really.

Are you the stupid version of me
Quite possibly. But you're the version of me that never tries.