Friday 1 January 2016

A Little Resolve

Many years ago on a visit home, and still slowly emerging from the youthful daydreams that had enveloped me for the previous decade or so, I said to my parents, "Look, I may not get a steady job for a while...  I want to be a writer".  To my surprise, they weren't in the least bit bothered.

Which was annoying, to say the least.  Having done me the disservice of providing a happily normal childhood, with no neglect or pain to speak of – or, rather, write about – now they were going to deny me the pleasure of kicking against their conventional expectations (as in "Sha-na-na-na-na, get a job"). Well...  Just to show them, I did get a job.  Hah!  And spent the next thirty-five years as the most ironic wage-slave and public servant the world has ever known: see, I could have been a writer, but I choose to do this!

I'm joking, of course, but there is an element of truth in my jest.  It takes more than ability and ambition to break free of the invisible bounds of your upbringing, and live by your wits.  Especially if you like the finer things in life, like three meals a day and more than one pair of shoes.  In the romantic view, what it takes is that rare and dangerous thing, an inner hunger that refuses to be satiated and that will, if necessary, demand the sacrifice of everything that others value most highly – family and friends, comfort and stability, dependable income, even sanity.  In the more prosaic view, what it takes is an even more rare and daunting trait: persistent, hard slog.  A writer is a person who writes.  The truth is somewhere in between, of course: a writer is a person who writes, even as their partner angrily slams the front door for the very last time.  A writer is a person who writes, smiling inwardly at the sound of that slamming door...  Finally, some peace.  Finally, something juicy to write about.

Not a montage!

So, having failed, all those years ago,  to become a driven monster of ego with a Stakhanovite work-ethic, I'm thinking of giving it a go in late middle-age.  And why not?  After all, if the 1000-plus posts on this blog average, let's say, 500 words, and the typical novel is around 80,000 words, then I've already written the equivalent of five or more novels, spread over seven years.  Not a bad productivity rate.  It seems the only thing standing between me and the Booker shortlist is another 160 posts, admittedly arranged in the right order, somehow thematically linked, and perhaps with a few of those awkward sex posts that might, with luck, also get me on the Bad Sex Awards shortlist.  I give it a year!

And anyway, if nothing else, it would mean all those little jobs around the house will finally get done, as I seek out creative ways of putting it all off for another decade or two.  As Peter Cook is alleged to have replied to a friend at a party who declared he was writing a novel:  "Oh, really?  Neither am I ..."

So, Happy New Year!  In 2016 let's put the resolve back into "resolution" –  I'll see you at the Daydreamer of the Year awards!

Daydream Believer ca. 1961

11 comments:

Zouk Delors said...

Actually, Mike -- despite the fact that goodreads gives it as a personal quote by Cook -- I think "Neither am I" was the text of a cartoon drawn for Private Eye by Barry Fantoni, as related in his tribute to the great man here:

http://www.ryanbrown.co.uk/petercook/articles/guardian-5.htm

An anecdote I love concerning Peter Cook (which was published in a letter to the Guardian in the shower of tributes which followed his death) was from a man who, like Cook, lived in Hampstead. He was in the local hardware shop as a customer one day when Cook -- mistaking him for shop staff -- approached, asking: "Secateurs?". The racconteur relates how, without missing a beat, he replied: "Non-secateurs!". Nice to think that really happened.

Happy New Year

Mike C. said...

Someone needs to set up a Gold Standard quote authentication service! How about the United Nations? Then it could be UNQUOTE... (ba-dump! Ting!).

Happy New Year!

Zouk Delors said...

I think you'll find Quotesmeister Nigel Rees has got that role pretty much sewn up. He himself is noted as providing some support (from Richard Ingrams -- but not confirmed by Cook himself) for the idea that the line was originally an ad lib retort, as you suggest, here:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2013-July/127819.html


Zouk Delors said...

And of course, in the same semantic vein, there's I Love You ... Me Neither. Very sixties.

Greg Crombie said...

There is of course the depressingly real possibility that having spent years of your life struggling, going without and suffering rejection, penury, parental and peer group persecution that you will still fail to realize your dream to become the next Hemingway. That may not be a good enough reason to not give it your best shot, but then again.....

Mike C. said...

Greg,

Pretty much a certainty, I'd say. Just getting published is exceptional, and to make a living from it, miraculous. In the end, it's a supply and demand thing -- I'm quite an active reader, and reasonably well off, but I buy a tiny fraction of the interesting-sounding books I see reviewed every week in the TLS and the Guardian.

I'm happy with my life-choices -- interesting, well-paid work with an index-linked, final-salary pension versus scratching around for decades trying to make it in an over-crowded marketplace where connections (and private income) are everything, and failure and a penurious old age pretty much guaranteed? No contest...

The depressing thing is how badly-written so much contemporary published writing is... So many could do better, but will never get the chance.

Mike

Zouk Delors said...

"Best shot" is an unfortunate choice of metaphor in the context of Hemingway, isn't it? Don't do it, Mike!

Mike C. said...

Zouk,

See how easy it is to misattribute a quotation! Call for UNQUOTE...

Mike

Zouk Delors said...

As Oscar Wilde once said, "The trouble with getting stuff off the internet is, it's not always reliably sourced".

Martyn Cornell said...

As it happens, my latest book is indeed 28 old posts from my blog, though they're culled from about seven years of posts ...

Mike C. said...

Martyn,

If you mean "Strange Tales of Ale", I've bought a copy, but I'm afraid it currently sits in my (ever larger) unread pile. What I like about pictures, is that you can absorb an entire book's worth in an hour or two! Those words take time and effort!

Mike