I’d had my fill of rejection slips, nibbles, promises and cheques that never arrived. It was too much effort being turned down, messed around and let down.
I continued to write. The ideas kept coming. The career took off. I had a car and my friends and I headed off to Roy Harper gigs, Nick Harper gigs and others.
Late at night and into the early hours I would type my books into my new Amstrad computer. Disasters would occur. Late one night at three o clock, following a particularly productive five hour session on a novel I accidentally pressed the wrong button and had to sit and listen while the old Amstrad chunteringly erased the nineteen pages I had typed.
The books built up. There were Rock books, Sci-fi, novels, biographical works. I was utterly free. I would write them and print them off. My collection of A4 bound tomes was filling a shelf or two. My wife and children paid little heed, friends stopped being interested. But the ideas flowed and the books appeared. I no longer bothered sending them off.
Occasionally someone would read one and say how good they found it.
I had no constraints. I wasn’t producing material that was aimed at a market or for a publisher. I had a career and we were no longer poor. My dream of subsistence living as a creative force were long gone.
I wasn’t the writer I thought of myself as; I was a Headteacher. Only in my head was I a writer.