Call The Cleaners: notes on the birth of One Man's Trash

In a time when mainstream TV channels provide us with an endless onslaught of cleaning, housekeeping and interior design programmes, Britain's ITV has decided to put its own twisted spin on the theme, taking the weary viewer one step deeper into the world of extreme hoarding. Call The Cleaners is no run-of-the-mill, middle class renovation show with a bizarre taste for minimalism - and it certainly isn't for those with a weak stomach. Despite this, it airs at 8pm each Tuesday, following the wretched souls of "extreme cleaners" who invariably require hazmat suits. In the very first episode, they aid a woman who lives in her shed because her house is crammed with sentimental hoarded objects, a man who has abandoned cleaning after a divorce and left fossilized pop tarts in his years-untouched microwave, and the remnants of a heroin den that is more needle than floor.

The show is a macabre sort of comedy - not in the sense that the residents of the horrific dwellings are something to poke fun at, but that the cleaners are alternately blasé and utterly terrified by the things they discover. My personal favourite recurring cleaner, Maxine, screams when she comes across anything horrendous - but the screaming is tactfully done before the viewer is shown the revolting object, inducing a nail-biting split second of dread before we recoil and squirm along with her. From a filming standpoint, the engaging and kindly nature of the cleaners, who never pass judgement on the homeowners who have employed them, effortlessly involves the audience and gets us rooting for them right away.

Occasionally disaster strikes - in the third episode, the house was so disgustingly rotted that it was literally falling apart as the cleaners attempted to make it hospitable - but the heroes are always triumphant, and the homeowners eternally grateful, giving the viewer the sense that the conflict has been resolved in a moment of catharsis. Having avidly watched the show myself (probably through gruesome curiosity) I do definitely feel as though the audience is carried on a journey in each episode, and at the end a relieving resolution is reached. However, on contemplating it further, I (and my mother, who was subjected to watching the grotesque proceedings with me) came to realize that without actually tacking the root of the problem - how the house got so filthy in the first place - the poor homeowners may continue with their bad habits, likely exacerbated by the abundance of space in their previously crammed rooms. Obviously this isn't to say that the service isn't important, since it is vital to ensure that the residents have a better quality of life and less risk from illnesses (such as mildew-induced respiratory problems), but my writer's mind couldn't help but think about what happens next.

And it was there, sat staring at the bristling carpet of used needles and mottled graffiti on the TV screen, that I moved beyond the show onto a new, bolder, firmer train of thought. I can write about this.

How not to write a novel

Recently creative writing has been quite a sore spot for me. My blog title is Escapism, and that is because the novel I was writing at the time of its creation shares the same name. Though I never actually sent the manuscript anywhere, upon showing it to both friends and family I received the same general critique - my writing style is engaging, but just too bloody dark. Some readers revelled in the bloody drafts I showed them, but equal numbers asked me with concerned voices, "Where do you come up with this stuff?"

So it was time to move on. After a series of seismic shocks to my mental state due to various things happening around me, I laid down my figurative pen and stopped writing. My heart wasn't in it, and it felt like a colossal lie to carry on writing something I no longer believed in. When the realization fully came that I'd abandoned something that I'd worked so hard on, my heart was truly broken, and so I needed a little time to recuperate. But upon watching that simultaneously dreadful and eerily fascinating show, a thousand new ideas poured into my dulled mind, stirring me up once more and dragging me back to the writer's desk.

The way I usually work is by sketching out characters, giving them a dark and twisted plot, and then worrying about intricacies such as setting and themes later down the line. But there on the screen, like a cornucopia of inspiration, was a web of fascinating topics that I knew I could tie together if I thought hard enough. Hoarding, dereliction, drug abuse, homelessness... these were all heavy, gritty subjects that would be more welcome in a murky documentary than an accessible Young Adult book, but I'd seen hard conversations had in YA literature before. For example, Clean by Juno Dawson is an unflinching tale about a teenage heroin addict's acceptance of her problem (and her privilege as a wealthy girl in expensive rehab). It had been done before. The question is now whether I am capable of packaging such dark material into something teenagers want to read.

I knew where I'd failed before. Escapism was written in third person, and though my prose did sufficiently let the readers engage with the many characters (I had to be reassured of this many times before accepting it), it could never build the same connection that a first-person voice has with the audience. I enjoy writing in first person more, so it might seem bizarre that I chose third person, but because of the nature of the story I was left with little choice. I had a wide array of characters in different locations, all of whom were begging for their stories to be heard. The only way to do so without needing seven first person voices was to opt for the neutral third person, which unavoidably dried out my work.

Another thing to avoid this time around was the despair my book seemed to evoke in the reader. The subject matter was undoubtedly dark; the main story revolved around the kidnapping of four teenagers, each who had poor homes lives and as such suffered from varying degrees of Stockholm syndrome. But the main issue was what my English teacher called the "bleakness" of it all, a lack of hope in the narrative voice that accidentally implied that things would never get better. I could handle dark, I could handle gory. Those are things that some people choose to not to read, but are still accessible to the majority of young adults. But bleakness appeals to nobody, least of all prospective publishers. It is imperative that this time I find a voice that offers the all-important aspect of hope that was notably missing from Escapism.

Finding my voice

The timeless classic protagonist in YA fiction is witheringly witty, a social outcast and usually nursing some deep psychological trauma as they go through their lives. A master of creating the cookie-cutter main character is Holly Bourne, whose books I have done an earlier review on. Despite my dislike for her approach to social issues in her writing, I can appreciate where Bourne excels - the female leads in her books are funny, flawed and use just the right amount of vulgarity to remind the audience that they are young and full of angst. Perhaps the single most successful first person YA narrative is The Hunger Games, where Katniss Everdeen takes us on a journey through the depths of her bitter, resentful thoughts as she grapples with her terrifying experiences. Unfortunately, though, The Hunger Games has spawned countless Katniss clones that potter about inside their own little dystopias, whining and complaining with nothing close to emotional complexity Katniss exhibits. This is not a swipe at any book in particular, it is simply an issue which currently plagues dystopic fiction, though it is blown massively out of proportion by misogynistic critics who believe every single female character is either Hermione Granger or Katniss Everdeen in disguise.

Thankfully I don't have to worry about that particular problem because my protagonist is male. My young teenager hoarder is Andy Finch, a bitingly sarcastic and psychopathically charming boy who cannot admit he has a problem with compulsive collecting. From an aesthetic point of view, he is white, has scruffy dark hair, brown eyes, bad acne, a blotched red birthmark across his neck and a gaunt frame. Fairly simple in terms of design, but what should make him a memorable character is how much of an unreliable narrator he is.

Throughout the novel, which will detail his decline into being kicked out of his house and trying to carry on hoarding whilst homeless, he will be treated differently by characters who know him well and characters who have just met him. In an antagonistic way, Andy is intelligent and manipulative, though it takes people a good while to see through his lies, hence why his mother and social worker don't trust him as far as they can throw him. As the story progresses, the reader will realize that on various occasions Andy has lied to them, making every recounted event subject to his own twisting of the truth. I plan to write it so that as the book draws to a close, the reader will be able to guess what Andy is really doing behind his lies, leaving them to wonder if he truly believes that he is the falsified, improved version of himself - or if he has been manipulating them all along. It is as much a game as it is a narrative.

I now believe I have laid adequate groundwork to dare to give this manuscript a name. After the well-known idiom "one man's trash is another man's treasure", the book will be titled One Man's Trash (or at least, it will be for the time being). Even though it turns my stomach, I will continue to watch Call The Cleaners, though preferably after I have eaten my dinner. It will serve as research for the nature and extent of hoarding, as described by people who have examined their habits for years. With any luck, it will consolidate Andy's character and help my understanding of the unnamed cause of his compulsions. My next branch of research will delve into the depths of understanding opium/heroin abuse, covering everything from feeling of a high to the symptoms of an overdose. My next article will be a compilation of my findings, including an economic analysis of what the U.K. would look like if we were to legalize opiates. Stand by for that

Like all teen fiction, the story will present Andy with an assortment of friends and rivals, though it won't focus greatly on romance due to Andy's intense preoccupation with his habits. It will touch upon Andy's loneliness in this sense; he is bisexual and this does play a role in how he forms relationships with some of the people around him, but this will not be central to who he is as a person. Representing different demographics is imperative to successful YA writing, and so I will make up for what Andy lacks in diversity through making him meet many different people from all walks of life whilst he is homeless.

One Man's Trash

I now believe I have laid adequate groundwork to dare to give this manuscript a name. After the well-known idiom "one man's trash is another man's treasure", the book will be titled One Man's Trash (or at least, it will be for the time being). Even though it turns my stomach, I will continue to watch Call The Cleaners, though preferably after I have eaten my dinner. It will serve as research for the nature and extent of hoarding, as described by people who have examined their habits for years. With any luck, it will consolidate Andy's character and help my understanding of the unnamed cause of his compulsions. My next branch of research will delve into the depths of understanding opium/heroin abuse, covering everything from feeling of a high to the symptoms of an overdose. My next article will be a compilation of my findings, including an economic analysis of what the U.K. would look like if we were to legalize opiates. Stand by for that, and in the meantime, you can follow my Instagram account @stonebakedspring for further updates and musings.