Confessions of a Failed Author #12

Do you speak German?

People are writing about me in Germany and I have noooooooooooooo idea what they are saying.  Whatever they are saying the '!' suggests....forceful feeling. Oops.  Eina.  Sorrryyy!

I'm guessing either they love me or....nah...probably hate me.  Ja vol!

Nick van der Leek ist Südafrikaner und wohnt in Südafrika. Ich habe fünf der sechs bislang veröffentlichten Bücher dieser Serie gelesen, und es war eine hochspannende Lektüre, die den Mordprozess von Oscar Pistorius genau schildert und analysiert. Wirklich spannend geschrieben.

Diese Version enthält leider nichts als Kopien der Facebook Statuse von Reeva aus früheren Jahren. Ich war von dem Buch sehr enttäuscht!

Incidentally the movie I have been waiting all year for has finally arrived and it didn't disappoint.  I've already watched it three times and I can easily go twice more.  That's about how many times I watched AVATAR.

The music in this film is MONUMENTAL.  You can listen to a clip of it here (sound clip is at the bottom of the post, play it from 3:44).

Meanwhile, I have to be honest.  I stole all of Christopher Nolan's ideas.  Because my sci fi epic - BLOODLINE -  set in Scotland has...well...how do I say this...it's a total fucking rip-off of Interstellar!

Let's see:

- food shortages - check
- drones - check
- secret space port - check

- world population wiped out - check
- everybody in his inner circle (practically) dies - check
- father and daughter get separated - sort've check, mine has mother and son
- involves spaceships, Mars and setting up a new colony - check
- involves the imminent extinction of all human beings on Earth - check
- involves a dude and a robot - sort've check, my dude has a dog

and this is where it gets creepy:

- involves a very important book case - check
- involves solving an equation - sort've check, mine involves a mystery more around the location of the base and who is operating it
- involves fighting on glaciers - check
- one of one - check
- involves fiery explosions on glaciers - check
- involves rocket ships flying over or crashing into ice - check
- there's also a sea scene somewhere else - check
- senior scientist dies fairly early on - check
- hero falls for a brunette chickie with short hair who has a different belief system to him - check
- central theme is loneliness vs bonds of family (and humanity) - check

Look, either great minds think alike or I should be sued for plagiarism.  I think the latter makes sense. Only one teeny tiny problem.  I published my story on Amazon (here) before the movie came out... And I wrote it like...2 years ago. Which means, Nolan stole MY idea!

Nah, it will make more sense if he sues me.  Need my address, Mr Nolan?

Confessions of a failed author #3.

Musings on 'Opportunism', Laziness and Creativity

At roughly 20 seconds into the above video, the Kyknet presenter asks the question: "If a journalist writes a book, isn't it opportunistic? This is the second book...aren't they just trying to make money out of this tragedy?"

It's true, I would hate to be asked that live and in camera. Recently I told someone I was one of South Africa's most diverse freelancers and she asked me to name some of the publications I've written for. I won't say I struck a blank, but I had that feeling you get when you go, "Shucks, where do I start?"

I suppose somewhere is the answer. I like the way Charne Kemp answers the question. She says, "That [making money] was never the goal. The goal was to write a book about a story that has everyone riveted." Let's be honest, writers - myself included - expect to be paid for our efforts. We don't expect to get rich for our efforts, or even to be paid what our efforts perhaps deserve. But like it or not, in the same way a petrol attendant, or a waitress or a Member of Parliament expect to be given money for time on the job, a writer has the same expectation.

What I find downright odd, is when you get people who devote their lives to the arts (painting, writing, sculpture, making movies etc) people are very quick to question their motives when they (think) they disagree with them. But if anyone's motives can be questioned it is the cubicle slave or office jockey who (secretly) despises his job, and only does it for the (gasp) money. That's an entire life, an entire vocation, dedicated to smiling for the $ sign.

Intellectual and Spiritual Laziness

Some people are happy to do that, and I guess sometimes a lot of moolah can help with the happiness part. Poor people are seldom happy. Right? Well, actually there are very few people who hate their jobs who are happy. They tend to feel trapped and miserably depressed. What could be more demeaning than giving large fractions of your life force to something you despise doing, for the reward of a salary cheque, and a squidget of certainty?

 On the other question, are poor people miserable and the super rich blissful?

I think the poor on the edges of the middle class, those fringes fraught with desperate attempts to compete (or live in the same neighborhood) as the 'Joneses' or otherwise become 'upwardly mobile' are certainly not the happiest. Failure to keep up with the Joneses means you begin to compare yourself unfavorably to others, which is a recipe for unhappiness. (The opposite is also true, happiness is knowing you are better than your neigbours, but - unless you're Warren Buffett - it only lasts so long). Trying to break into a clique, trying to emerge is always traumatic. It's no different for a writer slaving away in the hopes 'a book' will emerge from the sound and fury coming off their battered keyboards. The poor accept their shitty circumstances, have low expectations, but they still make a jol of it. They have a great community spirit, and they do take joy in the simple things. Until the next Act of God blows their house down, at any rate.

But whether we're rich or poor, our idea of happiness is not work...it's something like this.

Not necessarily breasts.  We think of soft sands and warm seas, and sunshine. And doing bugger-all.  That's our idea of happiness, isn't it?  Or is the secret to a good life our enjoyment of work just as much as it is about how well we love and are loved in return (something I touched on via Donna Tartt in my #1 Confession.) Think about it.  Surfers are having a much wilder ride than fishermen, and fishermen are getting a bigger kick than the suntanner.  Why?  Because it's in the experience - in the doing - that we feel alive. Yes, there is salvation in love and work, and for the writer, this is especially true, especially in our work.


I have written plenty of unpublished novels.

HOLIDAY

THE DEVIL SMOKES DUNHILL

And have I happened to mentioned this itsy bitsy little thingamajiggy I'm pottering on...

Bloodline - Ring of Ice

Have I adequately addressed the fact that most people who write for a living aren't motivated by greed?  Good, then let's move on to -

Rough notes on Creativity

Creative people are unlucky.  We're almost certainly doomed to failure (especially financial failure), certainly most of the time, yet in spite of that it's what we choose to do.I like these words n the topic by Ernest Becker. Referring to the 'Creative Solution' he writes:

It takes strength and courage the average man doesn't have  and couldn't even understand...The most terrifying burden of the creature is to be isolated...this move exposes the person to the sense of being completely crushed and annihilated because he sticks out so much, [and] has to carry to much in himself...The Key to the creative type is that he is separated out of the common pool of shared feelings. There is something in his life experience that makes him take in the world as a problem; as a result he has to make personal sense of it. This holds true for all creative people to a greater or lesser extent, but it is especially obvious with the artist. Exstence becomes a problem that needs an ideal answer; but when you no longer accept the collective solution to the problem of existence, then you must fashion your own. The work of art (or piece of writing) is, then, the ideal answer of the creative type to the problem of existence as he takes it in - not only the existence of the external world, but also his own...

[Note: if you've enjoyed this passage you should read this book.]

Now...have I completely addressed the fact that most people who write for a living aren't motivated by greed?

 They're more motivated by a love for what they do. I am. And I'd argue that's mostly true of the rest of reasonably happy working folk. Of course there is nothing like the announcement of a bonus, and we all look forward to receiving our financial dues, but we're far more motivated by an ecosystem of things besides - it may be colleagues, or rivalry, or a narrative that is developing around a project (and of which we are an integral part). And in this last sentence lies part of the answer to the second part of the question. When you write about things like the Oscar Trial (as I am, I'm currently working on a third Book in a series of 5)or Griekwastad,contemporary and popular tragedies, are you doing so with...ulterior motives? Are you profiting out of loss? And should the public endorse this? Should the public be complicit in this cynical parasitism and profit taking?

Well, let me use myself as an example. I'm not like most regular journalists, in fact I don't even consider myself a 'journalist'. I'm a writer thank you, and a photographer, but if the word 'photojournalist' work for you, let's run with that. I write a lot about climate change. I'll tell you this for nothing. No one wants to read about it, so it is a hard story to sell. But I write about it anyway, and I fight (contrary to my 'vested' interests with media houses) when editors try to dodge the use of these submissions. It's an important issue for me and I'm something of an activist on the topic.

Let's be absolutely clear about this: if I wanted to make as much money as I possibly could, I wouldn't write about climate change. Ever. A lot of people reading this paragraph are inwardly shaking their heads and going [so Van der Leek is into that stuff is he...one of those hysterical...unsophisticates...thinks the Earth is fragile and hugs bunnies...] I digress, but the point is, I write about it because I care about it. That's it. You'd have to be idiot to accuse me of trying to profit out of the loss the world has experienced from 'alleged' climate change. Because here's the kicker. I'm also experiencing that loss. In terms of the Oscar Trial, yes, I too am also expeiencing that loss.  In terms of Griekwastad, yes, I too also feel anger towards that boy.  They're unresolved feelings I the writer shares with you the potential reader.  And it's exactly because they're unresolved that we form this contract - I write and you read and hopefully, in this place and time, maybe together, we can fashion some sort of satisfactory answer to this...problem.

I care so much that I feel compelled to write the stories no one else writes. I am essentially writing the kind of stories I wish were out there so I could read them. Is that opportunism, or is it something more akin to...Conscientiousness? A sense of Mission. A Passion for living and encouraging others to live an authentic life.

Right now I am busy with a few projects, one of them is Resurrection, Book 3 in a series of 5 on the Oscar Trial.

The only thing opportunistic about these stories is that I hope to get them out before the freights of 'official' accounts arrive by the truckload.  At last count I heard there were seven books being written by various journalists and authors.  But I have my own story to tell.

Two questions I want to ask myself (and thus the reader) are:

What is a model? 
What is a hero?

My intuition tells me both our contemporary notions of these are wrong. My intuition tells me our attitude to money is wrong. Does having a lot of money hold off death? Does fame hold off death? What does? I'll tell you. Living a happy, and well lived life. Celebrity pretends to do that. When we watch movies, actors pretend to be having the good life. But what is the good life? It's something only you know, because it's different for each of us.

 Here's the thing. When there is a murder, and someone dies, we want to know why. When they are successful and beautiful we want to know how and why an ostensibly good life must come to an end. It's important that we ask these questions. It's important that we reflect. Because that is the first step towards healing, or - to use the Latin terminology - restitutio ad integrum. It means restoring to the original condition, and what is that for us? A condition before we were hurt? Or is it who we were destined to be? Who are you destined to be? Is your work taking you there? Mine is. If that's opportunistic then I embrace it. If you criticise me for it, it's because you're not embracing yours.

Confessions of a failed author #2

At 1:58 in the above video, Rowling says, "It's impossible to live without failing at something. Unless you live so cautiously, that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case, you fail by default."

If you look at social media, you seldom - or never - come across people celebrating their failures. You don't see it in friends or family either, because all we want is success, and we want to be around success-stories. But we don't learn from our success. We don't grow from our success. We learn and we grow by learning how to avoid failure, how to build on its vast and impenetrable basements.

Nowhere is failure more personal, I believe, than in the life of a writer. Why? Because a decent writer puts his heart and soul in his work, he exposes it to the world. The rejection of that amounts to (by implication) a rejection by the world of YOU. If a writer dedicated a sizable portion of his life to his craft, and fails, there is the very real imputation that MY LIFE IS A FAILURE.

It's debilitating. It's depressing. But is it any more true than a jilted lover or a rich businessman who base their identities on the romantic other, or on money, as a measure of who and what they are?

I used to have an inner fear that writing was in some ways pathetic, a cop out, a way to avoid living. Yes, it can be that. But it can also be an opportunity to re-frame a narrative. Not only your own narrative, or your nation's narrative, but a narrative of time and place. A narrative of an entire species, of a whole civilized world.

So you think words aren't important? Consider that at the end of everyone's life, from the greatest president, to the lowliest beggar, all that remains of us are words. Often the words of others.  Do they do these lives justice?  Sometimes.
I hope I have with my book on the late Reeva Steenkamp. Right now #88  #87 #54 on Amazon's bestseller list. More often than not, they don't.  When someone dies we dismissively say, "Well, X died doing what he loved." "Or Y is in a better place."  "Or Z passed..."  If X,Y and Z were present to speak for themselves they'd probably say, "You know what - I wish I was still alive, and not dead!  Am I in a better place now that I'm dead?  Really?  Well, do you want to swap?")

The true power of words hit me when I interview people who have achieved big things.  Published a book. Broken a world record.  All that effort - even if it was lived in the world - is still reduced to a narrative.  And if it isn't, it's lost.

So do I still think words aren't important? Are the opening sentences of the bible, a book that has shaped the entirety of human history, and continues to shape peoples lives, unimportant?  Are they even true? Here is something with the humble constitution of paper and intricate type...but it's the stuff that brings people together, others are put to death because of what's in it. Children come into the world because of beliefs that brought these children into being. Children are aborted, because of the shame associated with defying those beliefs. These sentences define our views of the world, and ourselves. That things are created into being. There are no mistakes. They appear immaculate, and perfect. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

I struggle with beginnings in my writing. Because I feel they have to be perfect. I struggle with endings in my life, because they are so imperfect, so unshaped, so unintentioned. It's easy to begin training for an Ironman, to start a novel, or a relationship. Endings are tougher. Because you have to see it all through, the mess, the magic. The meaninglessness. How does one find sense in there, where it seems to far removed from this theory we carry around...of Immaculate Conception... How about Immaculate Closure? Or Immaculate Resolution?

I love this cartoon.  But it's also true, which is why the sting of humor is so deep, and so effective.  Personally I think writers seek an outlet for their voice because they don't feel listened to.  And I think that starts at home.  Some parents don't know they are raising writers, and if they did, I don't doubt they would do something about it.  A failed writer is a difficult thing to do deal with, not only for the parents.  But writing itself is not a act of failure or resignation after all.  It is taking the problem of existence, and using one's own life force, one's own inner spirit, and creatively making it into something else.  That's big.  Sportsmen do it with their bodies, and we admire them for it.  Creative people do it with their minds, and their juices, and when it works it can inspire a generation.  It can change the culture of a species.  And all this comes out of a creative rendering of a private sense of failure, or discontent.  But it is a painstaking process.

It's a lonely craft.  It's slow.  If a Facebook update takes seconds (and often thoughtless seconds), a book can take years, sometimes decades, sometimes an entire life.  Bloodline - which I am busy with now - is already more than 25 years in the making.  I know that because it's my 25 year High School reunion this year.  Do I dare go to that?  My High School years were a low point for me.  My parents started arguing, my mother died at the end of it, and 25 years later my family remains fragmented from the war that was set into motion 25 years ago.  I started writing then and I am still writing.  Bloodline was in hibernation for about 20 of those 25 years.  Last year I found the wherewithal to dig it out.  Of my psyche.  It's been a rewarding journey, but it won't mean anything if it isn't wildly successful.  Because that is what the narrative deserves.  Except that is not how the world works.  If only it worked the way the books do, like this one.  I used to read this as a child.  A beautiful, immaculate world.  Where boys and girls and nature were friends with each other, and it was one grand adventure worth exploring in all its vividness.

In the end the writer has to live two lives.  The life of the narratives he breathes life into.  I have just published two books in a series on the Oscar Pistorius trial.  The Book on Reeva means a lot to me, perhaps because my mother was also a model and actress, and her life was also cruelly stolen from her.  Whether one can blame a 'perpetrator' in her case in another story.  But even in Oscar I see reflections of myself.  I remember my English teacher - bright-eyed - tripping over her own revelation, declaring to me, in front of the class: "You use writing like a ventriloquist uses a puppet.  You're quiet and meek, and your writing is strong and assertive, it has a much deeper, more authoritative voice than you do."

She was saying my writing was my prosthesis.  Making me taller.  And bolder.  Allowing me to pull my own strings and become more of a mensch.  Except I'm not sure if that was true, or the real me, even if that is how it seemed. The real prosthesis I was wearing was an external neck brace, which yes - had rendered me relatively mute.  Like that thing you put on a dog.  A muzzle, to prevent it from barking.  I'd been muzzled.  Not necessarily by the brace or even voluntarily, but by my classmates, who through the ridiculous apparatus attached to my face, had fun turning me into their Piñata.

How often do we do that, though?  Hit things with sticks and hope we'll get sweets?  Is writing (hitting keys with fingers) the writer's attempt to get sweets?  Or is it something deeper.  Giving a voice to the unvoiced.  A voice to the need to survive.  To overcome the attrition of life, and living.  The most that a writer can ask is to succeed at living and at writing.  The least is to succeed at one, or the other.  The tragedy, is to fail at both.  I haven't, but if I have, there's still work to do.  For me, and for you. 

Confessions of a failed author #1

I've never heard of Donna Tartt - in fact I have to check whether there are one or two 'n's in her name, that's how much I don't know her (or good English). Maybe the 'n' thing has got something to do with the way her surname is spelt. Two 't's instead of one, because that would make her a 'Tart'. Of course a Tart is the last thing a writer is. A writer must be as far from a Tart that it's possible to be because...I don't think writers get laid much. Which is possibly why they became writers. And if they did, then they'd stop writing...

So how does that extra 't' make the difference? How do I put that 't' into my writing? After all, Tartt is a Pulitzer prize winner. Her book, The Goldfinch, was just voted Amazon's Best Book of the Year. I've listened to the audiobook - the first 10 minutes before I fell asleep - in order to learn. I already have. I already feel inspired. Perhaps inspired enough to slay the furious monster, the frustrated writer who demands to speak but doesn't know how, and so mewls like a baby (except silently, inwardly).

For the record, I slept because of exhaustion, not because the writing was bad.

But here's what I want to talk about.

Have a listen to the above video. The part that gets me is from 3:42. What questions, the interviewer asks, are you grappling with? Let me tell you, this is a very personal question to ask a writer. And it's a difficult question to verbalise. Tartt does impressively well here. She says the real question she is asking is this, 'what is the good life?' Ask yourself that question for a moment. Is the good life wealth, or celebrity, or family? Is it holidays and parties? It's an important exercise even if only to contrast your hypothesis with Tartt's. Because guess what she says? She says we all have to work this out on our own. And then the interviewer asks - what is it for you?

The question seems to catch her off guard. Because hell, it's an incredibly personal question. Tartt says happiness for her are the 'two great salvations, love and work'. These are the main ways our life force expands, isn't it? We grow in love, our hearts build new rooms, and plant new gardens, and make new boundaries. In work, we learn to become masters (hopefully) at our craft. Whatever it is.

The interview then skips to a scene of the writer waking downstairs and suddenly it hits me. The immense wealth. Wow, with so much wealth it is easier to shut out the world and concentrate on one's thoughts. Or is it harder? Is there a temptation to take airplane trips, and holidays, and date?

Here's the thing that impresses me most of all. One of the things that I struggle with as a failed writer is the extraordinary loneliness of it. It's the reason I abandoned it when I went to varsity. And I failed at that too. Loneliness is the reason I think behind the failure-in-the-real-world of writers I respect and admire, like Ayn Rand, Virginia Woolf and Enid Blyton. And Hemingway. And F. Scott Fitzgerald. I don't want to end up like them. Drunk. Suicidal. Poor. I want a well-lived life. Balanced. Mentally fit and well.

And I think the interesting part is the loneliness tends to suggest failure. Which is why I love the way Tartt re-phrases it. She calls it something more dignified, and even beautiful. Solitude. It's true. A writer needs that. I need that whether I am writing or not. But to write well, I absolutely need Solitude. And emotional quietude - at least from the outside world. My own internal chemical ooze is enough. Adding the poisonous broth of a breakup or the pride swallowing siege of the corporate cubicle slave makes my work erratic, and unbalanced.  But I've been a freelancer since 2010.  That's 4 years.  What's my excuse for not being published?  Not enough time?  Too much time?  Not enough solitude?  Too much?

At 4:43 the interviewer asks the pertinent question, but disguises it in a euphemism. Do you like the mystery about you? He's referring to her very infrequent interviews. Why become a writer, but shy away from one's own success. What is the point? Tartt says it's not about reclusiveness as 'a need to be alone when I work'. I get that. It's interesting though to be on the other side, seeing how the successful writer must push back the world, in order to function. The failed writer think his loneliness is a symptom of his failure, but actually he needs to be more alone to truly succeed. And once he does, he must resist the attentions and distractions and stickiness that comes with success, or risk failing once more.

At 5:09 I get the reassurance I really need. Can you be happy as a writer? Is writing living one's one wildest dreams? Really? Is it?

The writer's life, Tartt says, it to be able to daydream all day. 'As much fun as it is to read a book, writing a book is one level deeper. It's fun. It's hard at times. But when it's good, and it's going well, there's nothing like it.'

Tartt is 49. I'm 42. She brings out a book once a decade, and says she can't speed up the process. She's tried but doesn't enjoy it. When Alex Garland published The Beach as a 26 year old, I remember the urgency to publish hitting me. I think I was in my thirties then. Now I'm in my fourties. How long is this going to take? What is it going to take?

Here's a recent piece of writing, from Bloodline: Sharpened pencils. Scribbles on paper. These are my arrows. How far will they travel through time?  Which targets will hey hit?  Or will they sail, and drop and drift rudderless through the soils and seas of oblivion (and drown me in it).