Reading

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…..