Some days, writing doesn’t go well. While gnashing my teeth and
rending a few garments on a particularly gloomy, soul shredded morning, I wondered what on earth makes me want to keep trying.
According to a recent Bookseller article, the average author income is estimated
to be around £10K a year – and many children's writers actually earn
even less. Much of our income will
be from school visits, workshops and events, not book sales.
So why didn’t I become an accountant, doctor or
lawyer – or even work in Tesco? Something SENSIBLE? On what I refer to as ‘Rightmove
days’, I mostly look at islands for sale in remote places and wonder if I
should buy them (if I had the money, obvs). Then I could stop writing, come off
all social media, lose the angst and become a hermit.
But I don’t. I keep writing. And not just because of lack of
island buying money. So why? What’s the point?
A psychiatrist friend once told me he thought writers were simply trying to achieve immortality and cheat death. Writing books, even if they go out of print, proves we achieved something. We’ve left our mark.
A psychiatrist friend once told me he thought writers were simply trying to achieve immortality and cheat death. Writing books, even if they go out of print, proves we achieved something. We’ve left our mark.
People have been doing this for millennia. Realistically we haven’t
evolved much in the last 40,000 years, since our Palaeolithic ancestors took the time to stencil their hands - which amazingly still wave at us from the dark past.
Archaeologists speculate that cave paintings,
hand stencils and patterns could be ritualistic, tied in with hunting or spirit
journeys. They may well be right. But what if those artists simply wanted to tell stories? To create something others could see beyond their lifetime? To leave something of themselves behind.
 |
| Is this a story told by a paleolithic writer? |
Go to any historic monument and you’ll find graffiti. It might be seen as vandalism – but in time, even graffiti can become interesting.
From crude phallus drawings (there are plenty in ancient Pompeii as well the
garage walls around the corner) to the runes the Vikings
carved inside Maeshowe burial mound and Banksy 'vandalising' walls in public places, sometimes making your mark really does last. And often the graffiti tells us a story, even if it's simply 'Thorni f*cked. Helgi carved.' (A Viking rune at Maeshowe which official guidebooks usually tone down)
 |
| Runes at Maeshowe |
But we writers don’t carve our words into stone, and paper doesn't often stand the test of time. So are all those
sleepless nights, weeks of self doubt, terrible angst and railing
against the machine really worth the few odd moments when you meet a reader who
tells you they loved your work?
Yes. I guess they must be or we wouldn’t do it. We may not achieve immortality through it, but we probably all
secretly hope that at least a few children who read our stories will remember
them long after we (and our books) have gone. Perhaps see something we've tried to express in our writing that strikes a chord, or makes them feel better about themselves.
Anyway, realistically, I’m not much good at anything else.
4 comments:
But why are we no good at anything else? Why did we choose story-telling to practice and practice until we're so good at it? Why did my brothers and partner choose painting and drawing?
I'm not convinced by the 'attempt at immortality' argument. I've never expected my books to last for long. Once I'm dead, let fire devour the earth -- and all my books. I don't care.
Freud let his misogyny show by arguing it was all about sex -- unable to kill a mammoth to impress the ladeez, some modern men wrote a book instead. Okay, so why were Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte doing all that writing when it wasn't even considered suitable for a woman?
I suspect the reason we write has more to do with those cave paintings: it's about belonging to this world and trying to understand and influence it. Especially understanding.
David Almond talks about "holding back the dark" with his writing, and I guess there is an element of that in it for me, too: The Goose Road was a statement about something that mattered a lot, that I'd thought about deeply, and poured all my energy and creativity and experience into. But like you on a bad day, Lu, I'm not convinced it's worth doing all again, at least not unless/until something equally worth saying comes to mind. I keep thinking I've found a new story, and then... Anyone got a straw and some paint I could borrow?
I don't know about cheating death, but I do wonder sometimes, with the reductive viewpoints and language of psychiatry..... reading it all might lead to aspirations for early death.
I do recall that Freud also said something along the lines of.....
"Every time I think I've come up with some new startling insight into the human condition..., I find that artists, poets, writers have got there first..."
Andrew, I think you're right. And to be honest, I don't think I'm trying for immortality, more writing to keep myself sane - but one doesn't admit that to a psychiatrist...
Post a Comment