Too Broad

So there I was, a new student. I left school in 1980 without qualifications. As a result of being beaten up shortly before my exams, I could no longer handle the exam situation; in fact, I just wanted to escape. I have never questioned the truth of my belief. I was in the top sets for maths and French; all other subjects were average. So, how did I pursue a PhD, often regarded as the pinnacle of academic achievement, and what does it entail?

The answer to the first part of the question has its origins in a story I began during my master’s degree in creative writing. The pandemic was raging across the world, and conspiracies were rife. Some were outright crazy, some, though, were plausible, and others remain inconclusive. None of which will be discussed here.

My story evolved into a novel, Mind Cloud, in which individuals who speak the truth have their memories downloaded into a ring. This is then placed inside a construct—a 3D-printed person with a whole new, programmed identity. My thought was, what would happen if the true identity were to leak out and the realities combined?

The idea grew stronger as I wrote. I began to research and understand more about myself and what happened to me as a child. I’ll come back to this.

The Cambridge dictionary defines research as: ‘a detailed study of a subject, especially in order to discover (new) information or reach a (new) understanding’(Cambridge Dictionary, 2025). So that is what I set out to do. My problem was that I had no idea how to go about it. There are numerous repositories of research data. The one I did know was Google Scholar. My experience with Scholar was negligible—time for a steep learning ramp. To AI or not to AI, that is the question.

At the time of writing (March 2025), AI research tools were still in their youth; generative AI images still have six fingers; and, as for writing, well, let’s not go there. Clever as it might seem. The process by which AI generates words involves converting text into numbers or tokens. It may know what ‘the’ is, but not ‘T’, ‘H’, ‘E’. A fun test for it was to ask how many ‘Rs’ there are in Strawberry.

My initial search was rather broad: ‘Does the NHS use fiction for wellbeing?’ It turns out that the NHS has a storytelling department, which differs by region and health trust. You can even get some self-help books on prescription, though the take-up is small as many people feel stigmatised when it comes to mental health problems. Things are improving in this area. The National Audit Office(NAO) report states, (Hyde et al., 2023, p. 13) ‘Around one in six adults in England have a common mental health disorder. Around half of mental health disorders (excluding dementia) start by the age of 14.’

Now I understand why the research question needed to be refined and focused. Vague questions receive vague answers, and too many of them at that. My daughter suggested I read “The Body Keeps the Score” (van der Kolk, 2014), which explores how mental wellbeing impacts physical health. The book contains many examples of how people have reacted to telling stories of their trauma. Many spoke about improvements to their wellbeing and gained a sense of order from repeated exposure to the events.

Staying focused, however, is a different skill I had yet to perfect. Being close to the subject, in terms of trauma and its lasting effects, led me down many rabbit holes. I was half-expecting to bump into Alice somewhere along the way. One such warren was that of neuroscience and the creation and recall of memories. Fascinating as it was, I had to leave it alone. Although it contained some valuable data, I was in no position to determine its potential use.

Broad searches produced too many results. A search for ‘fiction for wellbeing’ returned 13,600,000 results, mostly ads and dead ends. Furthermore, most were about reading and its benefits, some of which overlapped with the findings of this study. Who knew words had so much power?

I had always believed that reading was good for relaxation or mental escape. What I discovered was something more profound, enriching. Some benefits were apparent, though I had missed them until they pointed them out. Reading increases vocabulary despite the learning ability of the reader (Ebscohost.com, 2019). It must be said that those with a learning disability, like dyslexia and other cognitive issues, struggle more than those without and will continue to do so. I learned that it was called the ‘Matthew Effect’, named after a passage in the New Testament, below. The phrase was first noted by sociologists Robert K. Merton and Harriet Zuckerman in 1968.

 For every one who is faithful in using what he has received will be given more, so much more that he will have an abundance. But those who are unfruitful in the way they use the little they have will end up with nothing; everything will be taken from them.

Matthew 25:29 The Truth New Testament (2009).

This implies that if we do not use what we have, we will lose it, but if we use it, we will get more. From my own experience, I can attest to this being true. My first written work of length was in primary school when I filled a notebook with ‘The Tales of Katy Kitten’. Later in life, I took up poetry, mostly trash, but it scratched the proverbial itch to write.  This developed into my first novel, ‘The Rising’, in 1990, which had around 20,000 downloads, despite being poorly written. This led me to discover that few readers are writers. I went on to craft 12 more. In my opinion, the latter ones have developed fully; by that, I mean they appear simple but took effort to achieve that simplicity.

Writing is the vehicle that brought me to this point. If I had left writing as something I did in the early years of school, I would not have found my way here, and you would not be reading this. 

Chapter One – Chapter Three