"Ah Pain, thy name is Writing..."

Okay, here’s a little teaser for you:
What have Chopin, James Blunt, Rameses II, Kenneth Williams, Sheila Hancock, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bruce Forsyth and me got in common?
That’s right. We were all born on the same day. And this has been my ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for as long as I can remember. With a hand to the precocious brow I have escaped many a sideways remark with my claim to arty fame. We’re a very sensitive bunch, us Pisceans – although I’ve heard that anyone born between 19-22nd of any month could arguably be termed a Cuspian because it’s such a close call, day-wise. Anyway, we are the creative Cuspians of the Zodiac.
So there.

Woe-me-oh, woe-me oh!

I’m actually more than a little disappointed that Tony Hancock, Lord Byron and Sylvia Plath weren’t born on this day because at times I feel a total empathy with these people as well. And whenever Brucie’s on the TV, I always get a warm glow. But that could be more to do with the sofa; there’s probably a small empire of hitherto undiscovered life-form living in the depths of that and none of us would know.

Arthur Schopenhauer, as we all know, was the quintessential Philosopher of Pessimism and for that reason alone, I respectfully doff my creative Cuspian Cap; I bet HE turned up "Tears of a Clown" full blast too.


You see, for all the hard skin we writers have to develop, and be seen to be sporting, we’re nothing but a bunch of totally tormented artists, deep down. And this is what I find the toughest thing to cope with in writing. To harden my fragile, approval-seeking skin to the rigours of this very subjective pursuit.

I’ve been wondering recently if Dickens had had access to the internet, whether he’d be trawling through Amazon listings and the Authonomy website hoping to see his rankings increase. And if Jane Austen had a Facebook page, if she’d be constantly fretting over how many ‘likes’ ‘fans/friends’ she was getting daily. And how tortured would Shakespeare have become if he hadn’t got any comments on the blog post he’d spent ages honing to his idea of perfection that morning?

My internal meanderings even took me as far as finally understanding why and how and in what place Van Gogh must have been to have gouged off his own ear. Web-surfing will do that to ME at times. I guess it all boils down to the eternal struggle for artistic recognition, doesn’t it? Our readers. Our audience. The people that we hope we can entertain. The ones who will applaud our finer bits and perhaps ignore or heckle or reassure our bad. And if we don’t get the kind of support and recognition that we hope we deserve, that we strive to achieve, then at times it does make you feel like stuffing dampened blankets round the kitchen door frame and turning the gas up a bit.

My personal response to rejection disappointments is one of retreat. Much like the injured wild animal. I prefer to take my wounds away from societal scrutiny and go somewhere quiet and dark until I am repaired. Until I feel strong enough to try it all over again. Because this is an exhausting road we have lain before us - the road to literary success. And there are other, less scaredy-cats out there who seem to instinctively know how to bounce right back and keep on going for their particular kill.

Which is why Mother Nature invented Little (Literary) Chefs.
I haven’t given up my journey; I’m just having a pit-stop and rethinking my route, that’s all.
And the All-Day Breakfast looks nice too.

Strictly Determined

Tonight's the night! Strictly Come Dancing, the show to which our blog pays homage, is bringing its warm, friendly glitter and glamour back to the screens.

Brucie will crack the same old cringe-worthy jokes and then say 'think about it' in case we're too thick to understand. Viewers at home will lament the ditching of Arlene. The dancers will nervously await their first moment of glory, and across the land grumpy dads on sofas will comment “never 'eard of 'im,” and “who's she when she's at home?”

Much as I enjoy Strictly Come Dancing, I have some sympathy for the view that it is scraping the barrel with its choice of celebrities. It could even get to the point where they'll be reduced to asking me to be on it. As a result, viewers initially tend to scoff about the contestants. Who on earth are they? What have they ever done? Isn't it a disgrace that anyone thin and young can get on TV these days without proper talent?

But if this series is anything like the last, we'll get to see the real reason why they are marginally more famous than us. Some of the contestants – maybe not the ones we expected – will turn out to be very, very good at dancing. Not only that, but they will spend phenomenal numbers of hours practising. They will get things wrong, they will crash to the floor, they will have moments of despair and self-doubt, they will carry on through illness or injury, repeating the steps however many times it takes to get them right. The sheer physical and emotional effort involved is incredible to those of us more familiar with Viennese Whirls than Viennese waltzes.

And where has that level of ability and determination got them so far? A minor role in The Bill or something. No wonder the rest of us aren't on the telly!

Sometimes in trying to make sense of rejection after rejection, writers look for reasons why others have got published - and it has to be anything other than the uncomfortable idea that they are talented and hard-working. If an acquaintance appears to dash off a first draft in two months, give it a quick glance through for typos and have a £100K advance by the next weekend – well, surely there must be some rational explanation for their success.

The lovely readers of Strictly Writing are not the type to whinge that others had unfair advantages, but you've probably all seen it happen in the more cut-throat corners of the writerly internet. New authors, people say, must have known someone in the business. They got published because they're blonde and pretty. Their great aunt was Agatha Christie's hairdresser's cousin; they went to Eton or did a week's work experience at Penguin in 1989.

Well, for most previously unknown novelists, the only rational explanation is that they worked outstandingly hard behind the scenes – for years, usually – cultivating their talent and practising until they got things right. That's all. Even that was never guaranteed to be enough to win a publisher's vote, but at last they made it into print on the strength of that effort and not because of what they look like or who they went to school with. We don't get to see just what it took because there was no one there to film the mistakes and challenges on the way, but we can rest assured that they happened.

Getting published might not involve glamorous frocks, glittering trophies or terrible jokes from Brucie, but it requires so much genuine work and determination that it's certainly an achievement worth dancing about!