I shared an exchange, recently, with a very famous (infamous?) music journalist, author and broadcaster (and no; it fecking well wasn’tPaul ‘Rock Is Dead’ Gambaccini).
The scribe in question has been a long-standing hero of mine and source of inspiration for decades. It’s not just the excellence of his writing, though, that appeals. It’s also the sincerity and authenticity of his work that marks him out as something very special. His work is honest. Oftentimes, brutally so.
However, I digress. The point is this; during our most recent discourse, I was bemoaning the fact that my own humble efforts in the freelance world, while generating plenty of work, simply don’t make enough money to enable me to scrap the day job and write full-time.
His sympathetic and encouraging response went, “Good luck with your own writing. Don’t assume you won’t get any further with it either, career-wise. I feel like it is only now I’m finally putting something down that comes even close to the sort of thing I’ve always dreamed of doing. And, as you know, I’ve done an awful lot of crap along the way to keep paying the bills. If you can avoid that pitfall by earning some other way I would say that’s a really good way to go”
This isn’t the first time he’s had a few kind and/or supportive crumbs to chuck in my direction, either. A couple of years back he described one of my efforts as making him feel “like an amateur”. Utter nonsense, of course, given the entirely different and elevated plane on which he works but greatly appreciated nevertheless.
You see, as he well knows, writing is frequently the loneliest task imaginable and while support, help and encouragement from friends and loved ones is invariably heartfelt, sincere and entirely genuine, it often brings with it the conviction that it’s offered because of who you are and what you mean to those people. Coming from someone like my unnamed pal, on the other hand, well, it gives a desperately needed lift when the chips are down.
A full-time day gig, three kids, no discernible progress and all the other stuff that comprises a forty-something’s life at the start of another century of war, death, famine and plague all too frequently induces a longing to hang up the pen, think ‘fuck it’ and spend more time with the single malts.
That, somehow, I’m still hanging in there is in no small part due to Mr-you-know-who-you-are. We’ll leave your name out of this, though. That way you might avoid the bricks through your window that some of my more vociferous critics feel your part in the creation and sustaining of this particular monster deserves.
Here’s to you Dr. Frankenstein. You just keep on keepin’ on.