We were having our first project team meeting in an office
in Queen Anne’s Gate. The Home Office official had spent over an hour
describing the project in excruciating detail, and not just the project, but
his own (in his view absolutely pivotal) part in originating, designing and
placing that project, and indeed all the significant events of his life to date
that so fitted him to be the leader of that project. He continued in
microscopic detail to tell us exactly what the role and tasks of our Unit
within that project were to be. Suddenly our Unit Director, Brian, began to
speak over him.
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that there is a thriving
export trade in used car tyres between the UK and West Africa? Over there they
cut the rubber bits up and use them to make the soles of sandals. Isn’t that
ingenious? And of course, in Eastern Europe they recycle the car tyres by
putting them on horse drawn vehicles for use on the roads. You see it in all
the rural areas, and in many cities come to that.’
There was a silence, Brian looked at our host and
said, ‘You were saying ….’
I should clarify that our meeting and the project it
concerned had absolutely nothing to do with used car tyres, trade with West
Africa or sandals.
Later as we walked back to St James’ tube station,
Phil asked Brian, ‘what was all that about tyres?’
Brian smiled, ‘well, you take so much in for so long
and then you’ve just got to let something out.’
And I think that’s one reason I started writing short
stories and poetry and now my first novel. I’d been taking in so much for so
many years.
All those years of reading other people’s work,
whether fiction or non-fiction.
I didn’t grow up in a book-ish household. My first
reading memory is of trying to pronounce the words on the backs of cereal
packets, ‘Riboflavin’, was an early favourite. From there I progressed by
devouring the shelves of my local branch library – initially, inevitably, Enid
Blyton but then W.E. Johns, Arthur Ransome, John Buchan, those yellow Gollancz
Sci-Fi titles, then books on politics, books on history, and then later the
humour, James Thurber and Giovanni Guareschi. It all went in, and somehow it got
absorbed.
And it wasn’t just books, and it wasn’t all reading –
there was radio, ‘Round the Horne’, ‘I’m Sorry I’ll Read that Again’, all
contributing to my love of words and wordplay. There were films and there was
television, and I started to think in ‘scenes’, to see stories as sequences of
pictures.
Of course I did write. After University I joined the Civil
Service and I was taught to write reports by my elders and betters. ‘Keep it
balanced. Avoid any trace of passion or enthusiasm. Avoid expressing personal
opinions. Moderate language at all times.’ They should have borrowed that line from Joe
Friday in ‘Dragnet’ – ‘just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.’
I wrote articles for serious professional journals
about topics such as public conveniences and solid waste incinerators. Once, an
odd break, I got asked to draw a cartoon to accompany an article about toilets
called ‘Ladies, Gentlemen and Vandals’, the fee for which made me, the odd one
out in a family of visual artists, for a time the person making most money out
of art.
And why did I write? To promote my research group and
to promote my own career, an exercise in marketing. What was the term? – AIDA –
make them Aware of you, Interest them in your material, make
them Desire to learn more, encourage
them to take the Action you want. A
simple mantra but effective.
For a while, I was actually the editor of the journal
of my professional body, in which capacity I also ‘ghost-wrote’ a series which
purported to be written by an attractive, twenty-something female making her
way in our profession, (her ‘photo appeared at the head of each quarter’s
column) The first couple actually had been but she quickly bored of it, and so
I took it on, becoming a kind of literary Grayson Perry, a transvestite of the
columns. Hiding behind this ‘fictional’ persona gave me the freedom to comment on
a range of topics and poke fun at a few very senior people. It was very
liberating! All went well until we published a photo of the real young lady at
the Institute’s Annual Ball in a low-cut (though perfectly decent) ball gown.
We were accused of ‘lowering the tone’. Although I did receive a number of
requests for copies of the photo from members!
And now I’m in retirement, I no longer have to devote
my time and energy to earning a living. If I write now it’s no longer to meet
the expectations and strictures of others but to satisfy my own desire to say certain
things, whether that’s through a letter to a magazine or an article in a
journal or a poem read out at a writing group or a short story entered in a
competition.
And finally I’ve begun work on a novel, that, in a way,
links some of my earliest reading such as (Buchan’s ‘Island of Sheep’) with
things I’m reading now like the Icelandic novels of Arnaldur Indridasson.
And why am I writing now? I don’t need to impress some
employer. I’m not writing to make a living, I have enough. I’m not even writing
to gain the approval or acclaim of others, though that is always a bonus and
gratefully received as confirmation I’m treading the right road, a necessary
boost to sometimes flagging self-confidence.
No, I’m writing for me. There’s a phrase in management
theory, ‘Intrinsic Rewards’, the things that you receive internally, that you
give to yourself. It’s the reward that comes from improving your skills, from
growing as a writer. It’s that feeling of having achieved something of
importance to yourself, and of having done it well, having done it to the best
of your ability. And in the end, that’s why I write.
No comments:
Post a Comment