Got an e-mail from M the other day, she saves my life at work cos I’m usually whizzed through all the stuff I need to do by about 12.30 so for the rest of the day I need to look busy and how better than to be typing. Anyway this one enclosed an url http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/000809.html for an article (or rant) from this guy who was sounding off about the uselessness of people ever trying to get books published and it really pissed me off.

Basically he was saying that it’s pointless for people ever to try to get books published because even if you manage it you’re unlikely to make a living from it and there are so many bad writers in the world who needs any more. I can’t agree with what he was saying - some, admittedly not many, make a good wage from selling books, JK thingummy a case in point, Jilly Cooper, Tolkien (OK so he’s dead - but family done all right out of his writings.) That young kid in America who sold his teenage angst novel for millions…can’t remember his name but was on the late show a couple of months ago. Yeah not everyone’s a brilliant writer but then if you look at Van Goghs early painting - man he was bad… or Doris Lessing who published her first book at seventy (she’d written all her life, she just thought she was good enough to submit something at seventy.) People get better. And to be honest with how many billions of people in the world - if you can get just 1% or even .5% of them to like/read oh hell lets be honest here, just buy your stuff then you’ve got a best seller, enough money to pay the rent and you’re doing something you enjoy to boot.

Anyway I figured that my reaction made a good first blog cos I’d spent the past week trying to decide what to say…I mean to me the whole point of these blog things is to sound off. Say all the things that you might not say in public but if you pin it up here then its kinda public isn’t it so you’ve let off steam, someone somewhere in the intersphere might read it and take it on board and you can get on with your life without pissing off too many people. However unlike this guy I don’t think that they are or should be a solution to someone’s aspirations of being a writer, that seems second best - ‘I’ve spent all this time and emotional energy on this novel but I’m not even going to attempt to get it published because its really difficult to get published and I won’t make any money if I do, so I’ll hang it up here on the off-chance that someone somewhere might read it. If I really want an audience then I can send a round robin e-mail to my friends so that they can read it’ - Hell if your gonna do that then might as well print off the manuscript and push a copy in their hands - at least then they can read it in bed.
Now if the point of art is to provoke an emotional response then the guys a second Picasso. And what he said, from a financial point of view is possibly true in pound shillings and pence although as I said I don’t agree. But the point he seemed to miss is that we all need our dreams.
Over the past couple of months my whole mentality’s changed with regards to writing - in fact to art in general. I have always been creative - not my expression, just using the generic term for someone who writes, paints, sculpts, I don’t call myself an artist or creative. I work, and by that I mean I use whatever tools it takes to get the idea out.
I believe if you don’t reach for the stars you won’t stand a chance in hell of touching them….

I said this to M in my e-mail to her and she pointed out that there were a lot of her students who believed that writing a best-seller would get them out of a hated job when they needed to sort the job out first.
I know what she meant. To be honest a couple of months ago I would have agreed whole heartedly with her. In order to be creative you need a perfect life, fresh flowers, me time and someone to clean the toilet for you - now I don’t agree.
If you’re in a hated job then, like a prisoner of war - its your duty to escape, and if you dig your tunnel by trying to write a novel, get a picture sold, sign a record deal or whatever, then whatever it takes…However - like all escapes you have to plan your campaign…so you need to know your industry, your market, your competitors, you need to be able to fraternise with the enemy (i.e. the corporate, PR, AOR’s, etc…) and know the local dialects. So you learn all this while you start to dig…and then you have to steel yourself for the thought that this escape attempt might fail - but it shouldn’t stop you digging a new tunnel. I think the problem is the problem that many artists have now which is they won’t get their hands dirty by treating it like a business…it is a business..if you think about the Anthony Gormley exhibition ( which M and I went to the other week) - he didn’t have anything that radical to say about humanity or about inner space - nothing that hasn’t been said a thousand time over by anyone who did the hippy trail in the seventies before coming home and getting degree, - but he got two floors of a new gallery and a whopping amount of cash to say it because he knew, not instictively but through practice - what the arts councils, public bodies etc. wanted to hear.

The trick I think is to be able to make it look casual, - its the whistle while you escape which belies the three months/years/decades digging the tunnel…

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2003 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Bootcamp Guide to Happiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.