A Day In The Life of a Writer

Posted on by Opher

My life revolves around writing. That’s what I do. It’s what gives me pleasure and fulfilment. We all need some reason to get up in the morning. Mine’s writing.

My first task is to check my emails and social media; to answer messages and check out anything that has come through.

I then check my book sales and look for new reviews (I know – sad). New reviews give me a boost. You have to learn to ride the occasional bad one. You can’t please everybody. Sometimes a bad review can stimulate me to return to a book and check. I’ve rewritten one book on the basis of one bad review.

Having cleared the decks I set about writing.

I don’t distinguish between types of writing. I might write a piece for my blog or develop an idea in a novel.

If I am writing a novel I usually get immersed. It takes over. I wake up in the night with ideas. My mind is constantly churning through characters, plot and action. I begrudge any minute not spent writing it down. The ideas flow and take over my life. I’ve learnt to control myself or I wouldn’t have a marriage. I have to moderate.

If I am writing a more factually-based book I might do that in chunks. I will research one aspect and write that up. Not so all-consuming.

I’m very goal orientated. I like to complete a project.

When I am writing the hours flick past. I forget meals and can work deep into the night. It becomes like a meditation. The words are like links in a chain; they pull other words up behind them. Ideas do the same; one leads to a bunch of others. I am a one finger typist but I work at pace. I can type faster than I can write long-hand.

I am usually working on a bunch of projects – novels and books. I always have a poetry book on the go. I have a book called ‘The Death Diaries’ that I add pieces to every now and again. If I an editing I do that in sections then have a break to write something else. I need to do that to keep my mind fresh and focussed. Editing/rewriting is hard. Being objective does not come easy.

Every now and then I break for chores, cooking meals, cleaning, tidying, washing up, shopping. We share a division of labour in my house. It works.

In the evening I try to find time for my wife Liz. We usually watch TV dramas together. Then I might get back to work writing. I find that my energy levels and focus aren’t as good as they were. I can’t work late into the night like I used to do.

I take breaks to listen to some music, to take a walk. I was taking a daily two hour hike but that has lapsed into an hour. I fit my reading into short spells. I always have two or three books on the go.

I suffer with time pressure. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

Not every day’s the same. We do fit in gigs, theatre and friends – though not as often as used to be the case.

That’s it.

The life of a writer is very solitary – but it’s not lonely! Too much going on in my head to be lonesome.

Would I still start writing if I knew what I know now?

Posted on by Opher

I started writing back in 1970. Naively I wrote my first book, a very sixties mixture of prose, poetry and cartoons; a book that I thought was brilliant and likely to spark a career. That never happened.

I didn’t want much. I wasn’t dreaming of becoming a millionaire. I harboured thoughts of attracting a niche audience and selling enough books to enable me to live at a very basic level and write.

That never happened either.

We started a family and I had to earn a living. I went into teaching – just as a stopgap. It was not a career. I would come home at night, play with the kids, watch some telly and start writing at 10.00 pm finishing at two or three pm. When I ran out of steam. I wrote Sci-fi novels and anything that caught my fancy. I was obsessed with writing. I was up at seven-thirty am. and off to work. Managing on four hours sleep. Bouyed up on ideas and writing.

I was hot on writing but not so keen on editing or sending this to publishers.

Back then it was all type-writer. Editing meant complete rewrites and I was a one-finger typist. The work piled up. I figured that if I could at least get it out of my head I could find time when the kids had grown and I retired to knock it into shape.

I still had a dream

Well that stopgap turned into a career and thirty one years later I was a Headteacher, still scribbling away.

That old typewriter became a word processor (mixed blessing – I once lost five hours work – eleven pages – by pressing the wrong button at four o clock in the morning!). But it did make editing and sending material off to publishers a helluva lot easier.

I did get some things published with Oxford University Press – education stuff – not my Sci-Fi. Periodically I’d sent off stuff to publishers. There were a number of projects that seemed to be going somewhere but fizzled out. In 1981 I had a contract sorted for a History of Rock Music book but the company pulled out at the last minute – the cheque was in the post. We bought the kids Christmas presents with it. It never arrived.

In 1981 I spent a decade writing a book with Roy Harper. First it was a biography and then a book on lyrics. Just as we knocked it into shape for publishing he got cold feet and pulled the plug.

A novel takes about a thousand hours of work. I’ve now written over a hundred books covering a range of genres – Sci-Fi, Rock Music, quirky fiction, poetry, environmental, art, education, antitheism, biography – whatever takes my fancy.

Writing has caused strains with family and friends; it’s taken tens of thousands of hours of my life; it’s taken immense amounts of energy.

I did finally get published. I have eight books with SonicBond press. I have two with Oxford University Press. I’ve published most of the others on Amazon self-publishing.

The money I’ve made probably barely covers my costs. I certainly am nowhere near making a living out of it.

I keep thinking that I must send my stuff off to agents and publishers again. But I’m too busy writing.

So, would I do it all again?

Yes, of course I would. It’s not about the money. I enjoy writing more than I enjoy reading and I love reading!

I do begrudge the time though.

Soon I will have a publisher for my Sci-fi! I know it! That would be something…..

Why Do I Write??

Posted on by Opher

Why do I write? That is a question a lot of people ask me and it is one I often ask myself. 

Writing is a lonely, sedentary task. It is time consuming, frustrating and unrewarding in many ways.It was Paul Simon who wrote ‘All my words come back to me – in shades of mediocrity – like emptiness in harmony’.  That about sums it up. I am not the next John Fowles.

I did not study English Literature. Why do I think I can write? 

I write because I know I can articulate the contents of my mind into words that will resonate with my readers. I know I can and sometimes I do. I write because I have a head that is full of passions, ideas, thoughts, opinions and stories and I have a burning need to write them down.

I enjoy writing as much as I do reading – and I love reading. 

I am not religious. I do not believe in any god or afterlife; I do not believe there is an ultimate purpose. I believe we have to give life a purpose. We have to strive to make the world a better place. Writing does that for me. 

I love nature and am destroyed by what we are doing to the planet. It eats me up.

I write about the things that mean something to me. I am a communicator who is an idealist; I believe we can make things better. 

I write because I believe in creativity. Creating something beautiful or passionate gives purpose and fulfilment. My books contain the wonder in my head. 

I write because it is difficult. Writing a novel is like climbing Everest. It is so hard that it leaves you with a sense of fulfilment when you’ve achieved it. I’ve climbed a lot of mountains. 

I write because I am a rebel who wants to change the system. I want to change it because it stinks. I think we can do better. 

I write about my passions. 

There are no rules. I like to push the limits in every way going. My books are different. They are sometimes extreme. 

I write for fun. 

I have written 100 books and published eighty four. Eighty two are available on Amazon. They are my babies. They will live longer than me. 

I dread to think how many hours I have sat in the dark typing on an old type-writer or pounding the keyboard on my various computers. How much of my life? How many tens of thousands of hours?

A book would take me a couple of thousand hours.

I have carried out rewrite after rewrite. 

So far I have earned maybe around £2000 for all those efforts. I make about a dollar a book. It’s not a great return. If it was about the money I could have worked in a filling-station and bought a house! 

It’s not even about the recognition. You write into a relentless vacuum. Very few people take the trouble to leave a review or a comment. We feed off the scraps.

Writing. It is sometimes the most discouraging, pointless, lonely task in the world. Sometimes I read what I have written and despair. 

But I’m still writing!