Welcome to my blog. I write 1,000 words a week on themes connected with a writer’s life. In the 18 weeks I’ve been going I’ve achieved 60 hits. If you’re a populist, you are either in the wrong place or in the right place early.
How many hits would make it worthwhile? The answer, I suppose, is that readership is secondary. Or is it? If no-one ever reads a word, can it still be worthwhile?
Writers, especially those with no commissions to fulfil, can spend their days asking themselves pointless questions and their nights answering the questions with obvious replies such as, ‘Worthwhileness is in the eye of the beholder’ and ‘Seeing as time doesn’t exist, how can you waste it?’
A problem with working from home is getting any work done. In a town like Glastonbury, in which many of my peers are unemployed, as I am, it is easy for them to assume that it is absolutely fine for them to drop by and say things like, ‘Are you writing? That’s nice,’ and then not go away again until they’ve had their requisite cups of tea and gossip. Part of the problem is that I don’t know how to look busy. I could do it in factories, spending the days or nights wondering from one place to another with a purposeful expression on my face while actually spotting and enjoying the skiving and smoking places. In those of course, it wasn’t the smoking you were supposed to be ashamed of but the non-working and even that depended on your particular foreman. No overseers for the writer, however, unless you’re lucky enough to have a demanding editor or a vociferous readership. And how can I look busy when my writing life consists mainly of staring at the computer while thinking about everything under the sun except what I’m writing about and walking from room to room in the house suddenly in need of doing the washing up or planning what I may do in the garden sometime hence?
Which is what I’ve been doing for much of today. I’ve been out there, tidying up, but as I don’t which bits need to be pruned and which are to be left alone, the whole exercise becomes frustrating. Then I spent an hour unsuccessfully looking for my saw which, I guess, I must have left under a bush some months ago when I last got fed-up with a buddleia.
Why hasn’t the publisher got back to me? Last time he was as quick as a flash.
This week has been full of family. When people come to visit, it is hard to hide. The house is tiny: you can’t fart without someone hearing you. Yesterday I looked after my younger grandchild for a few hours. Is there anything more delicious than a 16 month old in a good mood smiling up at you in the sheer amusement of life? And in those moments of smiling back you probably do more good than any writer will do, even J.K. Rowling.
Having completed Sad Sam, I’ve lost focus a little. What next? Within the next couple of weeks, I’ll be signing off the dole and becoming a self-employed me. To cushion me from this fall from governmental cradling (as represented my £65 per week and council tax rebate of 100%), I will be applying for Working Tax credit. How long this may take to come through, no-one can tell me. Being on the dole, and for much of the time being told to sign-on weekly, is a discomforting experience – deliberately so – and a surreal one in a time of no jobs. I always had to wait for 20 minutes while watching, in an open plan office, my interviewer filing their nails or chatting to a colleague. This done, I’d be called over, asked a succession of patronising questions about what job searching I’d done in the last week, and then forced to stare at a computer screen while the interviewer scrolled through lists of totally irrelevant jobs for which I had neither the skills or qualifications nor the slightest chance of getting. Admittedly, calling myself a ‘bereavement counsellor’ totally foxed them for it would appear that never in the history of Job Centres has anyone ever wanted to employ a bereavement counsellor.
There’s a rule that if the job centre assistant prints off a job for you to apply for than you have to apply for it even if, as happened, you find the closing date has past or the post specifically requires experience that you don’t have. So it goes.
18 weeks ago, at the end of April, I began this blog with this very time in mind. Up to now was meant to be the preparation period. Between now and Christmas I have to start earning. To achieve this end, I think I have to turn to non-fiction article writing as the most likely way of receiving a real cheque. Writing fiction is so much more appealing but the pay-offs can be years away. Maybe writing some drama for the BBC could work but again there is no pressure, no deadline, when it is an unfolding idea in the head with endless plot-lines to develop. I’m hoping that somehow if I focus on articles for a few months and ignore the Satan that is the imagination, I may get the hang of it and make some money.
On a more positive note may I declare the imminent availability of my novel ‘BOGGY STARLESS AND THE DRUIDS OF GLASTONBURY’ on lulu.com. For four years I’ve been meaning to press the button that says ‘make available’ and today I did it. I was prompted into action by an article in my local paper extolling a local author for writing a book about a murder on Glastonbury Tor. Blimey, I thought, I’ve done that. So I’m going to write a letter to the editor pointing this out and referring to the availability of mine on lulu.com.
When you get on to lulu.com, you will find that BOGGY STARLESS’s authorship is ascribed to Dominic Quarrell. This is an unfortunate alias that I adopted as the result of a bet and I can’t change it now. It is mine and it is very good. Believe me, I’d know.
Dear Editor,
Re last week’s story of a local author’s Glastonbury Tor murder tale, may I draw your attention to another local author’s book, the Avalonian metaphysical comedy thriller, ‘Boggy Starless and the Druids of Glastonbury’ which also includes a murder on the Tor. This critically acclaimed book is available on lulu.com or via the author on floor39@yahoo.co.uk.
Yours,
John Heston.
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