Douglas continues his TIPM writing and reading for
pleasure series for June 2016 with reflections on six years of writing and the
future.
I woke this morning Wednesday 1
June 2016 at around 3.00am calm and fed up with my normal sleep patterns ruined
by medication. Almost exactly six years ago, I woke in a cold sweat, while in France,
fearful of those who were chasing me to death for something my parents or I had
done in our lives. I started to compose a story and wrote it down as soon as
first light came. I have not stopped writing stories since.
As I travel between restless
sleep and dreams, I reflect on the last six years. The positives of writing a
million draft words and creating structures for many story-books. The mind
stimulation I enjoy in meeting other writers individually, in writer’s groups
and at events and people in the book publication world. I also set up a web
site for marketing my own writing and a local writing group.
I mull over my mixed feelings
about devoting so much time during the last six years to the lonely activity of
writing at the expense of keeping up to date with family administration, family
relationships and maintenance of home, car and friendships.
I have a picture showing man’s
ancestors coming out of the sea and rising to great stature only to sink back
in bad postures in front of computers. My daughter says if I had not spent so
much time in front of my computer I would not be in the state I am in today. I
do not accept all her wise words and everything she says!
Although I have enjoyed the
writing side of being a writer, the self-editing, publishing, marketing and
other related tasks have proved less positive.
I dream of having many years to
finish my books and to get involved in the hard world of publishing and marketing.
I dream again of being a best selling writer and stalls on Reading Station full
of my books and Ingram Spark distributing my books worldwide.
I wake up and in the cold light
of day see my alarm clock showing 9.00am. Coldly I reflect on the reality of my
current position. I have again like many previous nights been in bed for nine
hours but only slept soundly for two at most. After getting up I can look forward
to at most four hours of normal activity before a medication hangover catches
up with me again for most of the afternoon when I often return to bed for more
catch up sleep. Evenings are restless when my concentration levels are low - my
normal bedtime reading for an hour or so is now down to more like ten minutes.
TV is mostly unsatisfying and I will leave the decisions on the EU to my
children who perhaps may not even vote.
A strange positive is my dreams
are even more vivid than in the first five years of my writing career. When I
wake at various times in the night, I scribble the scenes down. Then in the
morning, I find I can write the stories up without reference to my notes. The act
of scribbling seems to have fixed the content of the dreams in my mind and I
quickly get on a roll. A good thing as the scribbling is usually hard to
decipher.
I have travelled this path before
in 2013 to 2015 but then I stopped taking
medication and soon felt my normal self and took natural substitutes. I
said to my pharmacist I thought I was now taking serious and not optional
medication and he said, “yes … you cannot stop taking these”.
When I exchanged e-mails with
Jeffrey Archer in 2012 he said he was writing like mad before ill health over
took him. Even though he is older than I am, he seems to be going strong while
I may have fallen by the wayside.
A friend in his late sixties said
to me he has made a list of things to do before he is 70. Based on my
experience this seems a very good idea. I have been highly amused to peruse
books listing 1000 things to read, view or travel to all over the world. The
difficulty is that for the travelling one does need money that often only flows
a little more freely later in life when it is too late. Perhaps children need
to be given a list of a 1000 books to read when they are in their teens to
stand any chance of reading a 1000, with new publishing substitutes, by the
time they reach 70. I have probably read over 1000 books in my lifetime.
I am not too downcast, as I have
managed to do most of the things I wanted to do in my life except those which
are impractical or highly impossible. I have left my main character in my
books, Henry Cross to do these – fly like a bird, play cricket for England, build
a new house from scratch, travel in time, all with some spicy decadence … a la
John Betjeman’s dying wishes.
My father died when he was 70 of
exactly the condition I am suffering from so I am grateful for modern
techniques and even the horrible medication in giving me some additional years.
I have enjoyed a good family life, music, holidays and events. I look back with
pleasure at having flown on Concorde, seen a SR71 Blackbird and a Lightning
fighter flying. I have shared the powered glider controls of my now deceased
friend who was very safe but I think may have been so concerned about losing
his pilot’s licence he did not go to his doctor soon enough. I have sailed
10,000 nautical miles in all but one of the oceans of the world and travelled as
a tourist around the world. I have driven a steam locomotive and travelled on
the footplate of another as well as a diesel.
Faced with less time to devote to
writing, some things have already gone or are going, any desire to publish,
marketing, reading other people’s web and blog posts. Reading hard copy books
is also much curtailed … so sorry Stephen King. On reflection, I have not read
an e-book for well over a year and notice this may not be unique amongst
readers. The slowness of my current reading is illustrated by my reading of a
large volume of futuristic short stories by J G Ballard. All 1186 pages still
only 82% through after a start in January. I would take this book to a desert
island along with my eight discs - if I were ever asked.
Outside of keeping family life
and friendships going, the one thing I want to do is to bring all my draft writing
up to publishable standard but I fear this may be beyond me now unless I can
work much smarter and stop raising the bar on standards. I will continue to
beta read writing friend’s draft books, as this is mutually helpful to my own
writing and theirs. If Mick is happy I will continue with this monthly post
albeit it in less gloomy mode.
I may try to submit a couple of
stories to competitions a year.
For those writers and others in
good health and younger I would recommend based on my experience doing what you
want to do in life and writing soon and do not put off.
New events and news outside my
cocoon, which I have noticed, are:-
- An HMRC attempt to tax adult colouring books as incomplete books. I did not realise that “incomplete books” are taxable. (Or, how one is defined.)
- According to one book retailer, buying a book has become a means of reflecting our personalities as well as enjoying a good read. Ho, ho what’s new I ask?
- Children are being bribed or incentivised to read by parents … surely this is doomed to failure. As one commentator said rather than being able to define a lower sub plu-perfect particular clause or similar in a Stats test, being introduced to the first pages of several classic and current books may be more interesting and effective and light a fire of lifetime reading in children.
I am not sure what will be in my
next TIPM post. Probably reflections of my usual annual time in France if we
are both in good enough shape to travel - by the time I plan to go.
Douglas Burcham started writing on 1 June 2010 and self-published under the
Allrighters’ name a story-book 'Ywnwab!' in September 2013. A million words
of draft writing reached
completion in January 2014 split
between 900,000 words of fiction
and 100,000 words of
non-fiction. The latter being about writing
and memories of buildings,
trains, boats and planes. Since then slow progress continues to be made in the
conversion of the draft words into final books ready for possible publishing as
story-books under the Allrighters’ name.
For past TIPM posts see - Last post
