"The local University runs a creative writing course," says Richard Madeley in his latest bulletin. “I’m tempted to apply for it.”
All my life, I’ve been the idealist type, believing that the driving force of literature is essentially one of inspiration. I rather thought that you had to have a devouring passion for writing, as others have for gambling (after all, the odds are the same).
But perhaps I am simply out of touch.
There are, apparently, alternative ways to learn how to write: one is to sit in a creative writing bubble and live in a time warp - a region whose boundary shrinks to zero if you have nothing else to add - and the other is to set off at a blistering pace, hoping one’s temporal lobes don’t shear off under the sheer thrust of adrenalin. Which is like landing and take-off at the edge of a precipice. Way to go. A kind of literary re-enactment of downfall and salvation, involving a season in hell and a vision of death and rebirth. But it’s the torments of catharsis rather than hours spent with S & W’s Elements of Style that reveal the inner life (even though I’ve always been trying my best to view it as a challenge). Of course, you can always go to the public library and take out The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Fiction. The inspired sense of the art of the possible which has characterized all the greatest literary movements - the sanguine, the melancholy, the choleric and the phlegmatic - then becomes the limited longing for the literal lust of the language. No thought could be further removed from the notion of catharsis, but it helps to be artless. It could make your fortune.
So here I am, attempting to present myself as an inspiring muse while commiserating on my own experience as an accomplished failure. Alice reckons that if I keep climbing the pole at the Spearmint Rhino, I’d sooner or later catch the eye of a nifty and resourceful fixer calling himself a literary agent. That’s typical of people who are all about instant gratification. Alice, of course is the protagonist of my latest book, and has opinions as to the pros and cons of literary procedure that no amount of logic can dispel. Quite unlike Richard Madeley who, much like myself, is at heart a humorist, and who very kindly suggested that I should start this blog. That took me by surprise. I doubted anyone was interested. But if I were to return a well-intended piece of advice, that would be to look beyond the agents of today to the agents of tomorrow. You are, commercially speaking, strategically placed, and literary internment is not a desirable condition. Nor is staggering aimlessly around the literary circuit in search of representation, with little more than creative writing seminars or workshops on synopses as your literary heritage.
"Don't loaf and invite inspiration.
"Light out after it with a club." -Jack London
