Behind the Scenes: Writing 'Sometimes The Truth Is Not Enough'

This post takes you behind the scenes of my writing process, sharing insights, challenges, and the inspiration that fueled this project.

The Inspiration Behind the Story

'Sometimes The Truth Is Not Enough' began life not as a novel, but as a film screenplay I wrote back in 2007. A year later, we were in active production, preparing to shoot the film. I was wearing several hats at the time—writer, director, and one of the lead producers—and momentum was firmly on our side.

Then came 2008. The crash. Like so many others, our production was hit hard. Financing disappeared overnight, the budget disintegrated, and the project was left in disarray. Over the next couple of years,

I found myself walking the pavements of the Cannes Film Festival, trying to plug an ever-widening gap in our finances. By then, all the money was gone, and the last place investors wanted to park their cash was in a UK film.

I had written and directed a number of shorts and feature projects before, but this story always felt different. It had more potential than anything I’d done previously, which made it all the harder to put away. At the time, though, I assumed that’s where it would live forever—in a drawer, unfinished and forgotten.

I stepped away from filmmaking and turned my attention to art. I opened my own gallery and began selling my work, and for a while things were going well. My pieces were fused onto metal using a process called dye sublimation—an expensive medium, but one I believed gave me a clear USP in a crowded art world. Then Brexit arrived. The price of aluminium skyrocketed, costs became unsustainable, and once again, I found myself scuppered by circumstances beyond my control.

One thing filmmaking teaches you—often painfully—is compromise. Once producers become involved, budgets take centre stage. The knock-on effect is almost always cuts to the screenplay. Scenes are trimmed, moments are lost, and ambition is sacrificed. Special effects, in particular, were still prohibitively expensive at the time, so the script was gradually whittled down until only the bones remained.

Writing a novel, I discovered, is different. It has no such limits. There are no budget meetings, no raised eyebrows, no producer wagging a finger and saying, “It’s not in the budget.” If you want to crash a car into an Amsterdam canal, you simply do it. The only boundary is imagination.

That freedom is what finally brought Sometimes The Truth Is Not Enough back to life—this time, exactly as it was always meant to be told.

The process itself was unconventional. The book and audiobook took shape at the same time, a method that both helped and hindered me. Halfway through writing, I disappeared to Amsterdam and recorded every scene set there. I had a list of locations, each one pivotal to the story, and I wandered the streets wearing binaural recording headphones—special equipment with microphones built in that capture sound in full 360 degrees.

It’s a surreal experience. Immersed in sound, detached from the world, I nearly got run over by trams more times than I care to admit. I’m used to traffic coming from the right; in the Netherlands, it doesn’t. Combined with the disorientation of 360-degree audio, it took real effort just to stay upright and alive. Somehow, I survived to tell the tale.

But it was also an extraordinary way to write. Sitting in a canal-side café, absorbing the atmosphere, watching people drift past, the characters came alive effortlessly. I already had the story’s beginning, middle, and end—what remained was to layer in the nuances, the textures, and the humanity.

In the end, the story didn’t just find a new form. It found its voice.

Research and Exploration

Every story begins with a spark of inspiration. For "Sometimes The Truth Is Not Enough," that spark came from observing the complexities of human relationships and the often murky waters of truth. I wanted to explore how truth can be subjective and how it can shape our lives in unexpected ways.

Personal Experiences

Drawing from personal experiences helped me create relatable characters and situations. I reflected on moments in my life where the truth felt elusive or where honesty led to unforeseen consequences. These reflections became the backbone of my narrative, allowing readers to connect with the characters on a deeper level.