ANGRY RAMBLE: Why becoming a writer is a bad idea

Why becoming a writer is a bad idea

When I'm not working or walking I'm writing.

Writing begins as a dream. A vanity project. A hobby, a passion...a chore.

You read a lot and have ideas and those ideas create characters and plots and spark stories. You write them down, connect the dots...and one day, far into the future, you present your friends with a bloody awful PDF containing your magnum opus, your re-working of The Bible. "I've written a novel! I want you to read it and tell me what you think!" You leave them to it with a self-assured smile. You're a writer now. Job done.

That triumphant smile lasts as long as it takes you to figure out what lukewarm responses and the oft repeated phrases 'It's very well written, well done" and "I'm sure you'll find a publisher" really mean. They mean "Christ, I hope he doesn't ask me any questions...I'll actually have to finish the damn thing!" That's when you see through your captive audience's veil of politeness for the first time. And that's when your journey as a writer begins in earnest.

It's a journey of one crushing disappointment after another. Writing has the rare, possibly unique ability to destroy every piece of self-confidence about every aspect of your character that you ever knew you had...and more. In fact it accelerates this miserable self-destruction to exponential levels. It's horrifying when you think about it. Why people do it to themselves - why I did it to myself - is beyond comprehension. I've tried to rationalise my response to this unenviable situation but I can't...because there have been too many coffee-soaked all nighters, too many boozy mornings, and far too many cigarettes, ibuprofens and citaloprams which together make it impossible to be rational. The thing is, once you get to this stage of being a writer, you've spent so much time and effort and stress on trying to re-hash your masterwork into something that people will actually like, it's ceased to be a creative enterprise. It's war. Total war. It's You Vs. Your Idea of You as a Writer.

So you've written that first novel, you've edited the damn thing beyond all recognition, you've spent months or in my case years fannying around with all the wrong aspects of the manuscript in an obsessive and massively over-protective haze of booze and smoke, and you vomit the damn thing out for a final time without truly knowing if it will ever be finished yet hoping against hope that an agent will like it and all that hard work will result in publication.

Nope. It's a dud. Now the most sensible thing to do is walk away. And you think about it. You might actually do it. But the next time you pick up a good book you will automatically disassemble it and thrust its strengths into your work and understand what you did wrong and what you did right, and you'll have another go. Why? Because you've realised it takes a long time to develop your craft.

You mature. You write. You are cautious...and you don't talk about it so much. After the first seven or eight years and three duds I proactively sought out my former captive readers to explain to them that my writing was a vanity project based on the misbelief that I had the necessary skills to tell a captivating story, that I'd quit writing and I would never bother them again while secretly, in the privacy of my own sordid world, I wrote. I wrote, and broke myself on the wheel.

After ten years I'd written 'the one.' 'The one' is the one that impresses you, even in your most critical and self-loathing moods. It brings out a smile despite all past and present torments. No matter how brutally you treat it, somehow it reaches out and hugs you. That's when you know you've written your best work. Yes, it will be edited again and again, and probably again. No, it won't be finished, even then. Yes, there will be systemic changes that will need to be made to make it into the work you know it should be. But it's there. And it's yours.

'The one':

My one was called Prothero. Prothero is a secondary character of marginal importance but I liked his name so much I named the book after him. But it doesn't tell you anything about the story, so I changed Prothero to Buggered at the Battle of San Sebastian. Buggered as in drunk and in a scrape, not sodomised.

It features the siege of San Sebastian in northern Spain by Wellington's Peninsular army and the Royal Navy, which has very mistakenly been called Wellington's navy I assume because anything involving Wellington's name sells better (NB: I should have called it Wellington Gets Buggered at the Battle of San Sebastian. That would sell). It features the siege but it's not about the siege. It's not a military book. It's about a civilian caught in the middle of conflicts at home and abroad who must navigate the treacherous path between his many enemies to an uncertain future.

I was inspired to write this from a naval perspective because I was heavily influenced by Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series. I was also inspired to a lesser extent by the Sharpe novels. However, I do not have the technical ability nor the understanding to write convincingly as a maritime or tactical author. And instead of forcing my readers to wade through second rate militarised prose, I decided that the best way to experience the war was from the perspective of Taf and his oppressors. Taf is the main character. Well, he's one of the main characters...the war is seen through them...although it's not about the war...it's about them.

Unfortunately even 'the one' wasn't slick enough to enthuse the decision makers. Yet I knew it was good enough because it impressed me and I was damn sure it would impress everyone who read it. But that's vanity for you. No one was interested. And I gave up.

The closest I got to getting published*:

In the Agent's own words:

"Thanks for this. I think it's interesting and very probably is going to be commercially interesting to publishers. For one reason or another it's not quite right for us, but if you haven't found an agent yet I wish you good luck in the continuing search.

Rupert Heath"

That's the nicest fcuk you I've ever had.

* Published means getting published by a proper London-based print publishing house after being backed by a Literary Agent, not published as in self-published vanity project style new age independent bollocks, which is what I have become.

The end:

As Kurt V would say, So it goes. Writing is often a vanity project and a total waste of your time unless you're good enough to get published by an old school London publishing house, which I am not, or unless you are prepared to accept the certainty that your writing will amount to nothing and get you nowhere, which is where I am. So I officially throw my last work into the bin of Amazon:

Nalakamataki!

It's an office fantasy with extra yogurt, unclassified terrestrial intelligence, ancient rituals, outer space, inner space and violent telemarketing.

Want a free copy? Send an email to nalakamataki@outlook.com with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line, tell me which title you'd like and I'll email you a free copy. Please leave a review on Amazon!

Nalakamataki on Amazon

Buggered at The Battle of San Sebastian on Amazon