Writers and money

Let me start by saying that the majority of writers don't earn a lot of money. There are the ones who probably sell a handful of copies of their books to family and friends. There are the ones like me who sell lots of copies to complete strangers. And then there are the ones who sell fucking shedloads of books in Waterstones.

But I don't write books to make money (although, making money from writing is great).

I can tell you that a few years ago, I was earning nigh on £30k a year in the civil service, but successive changes of jobs and drops in pay meant that the last job I was doing, I was earning less than £10,000 a year. It was then that I decided it really wasn't worth remaining in "work", mainly because the pay was shit and it was sucking the life from my creativity. Now, I won't tell you how much I earn from selling books, but I can tell you I don't earn £10,000 a year. I do earn enough to pay a few bills and keep me in beer money, pay for petrol for my car, and get my car taxed and insured. And I don't have to worry about the rat race anymore. I'm a true bohemian - underpaid, undervalued, but still happy.

But people look down on me. "You don't work?" Well, actually, writing is working. "Is it though? I mean, how can it be if you're not in Waterstones?" Well, because I'm making a bit of cash from it, I sometimes spend 60+ hours a week doing it, and I-- "But you don't make enough money to pay a mortgage - you drive a rubbish car. Have you thought about getting a job?" Hmm. Well, you see where I'm going with this. People expect other people to earn lots of money or spend 35 hours a week chained to a desk, or else they don't respect them. The classic is, "Perhaps you should give up trying to chase your dreams and get yourself a job." For Christ's sake, writing is a job. I write books, some people enjoy reading them, and I get paid for doing it. It's not a dream I'm chasing. I've long since given up the dream that I'm gonna be number one in the Waterstones' charts. That simply doesn't happen.

Here's the thing - and this is the truth. Only a handful of writers get a major publishing deal. It's not worth the risk paying some new writer £250,000 for a book deal, not unless you're 100% you've got another "Harry Potter" on your hands - and those types of books are as rare as rocking horse shit. Publishers like famous people - they're more bankable. So that leaves most new writers with just a couple of choices. Self-publish, or try to get a deal with an indie publisher. The indie publisher will push your book a little bit, but they don't have the budget to compete with the major publishing houses. Effectively, if you're a small-time writer, you'll be lucky to earn more than a couple of grand a year selling books, even if you have a deal. But remember, that still makes you a writer.

Me, I'm a writer. Am I a full-time writer? Sometimes, I am. But some weeks, I don't write at all. I'm a bit lazy like that. Do I earn a fortune selling books? Well, no, but are we judged on how much we earn? Is that the most important attribute a person can have?

Those bad review blues ...

A lot of would-be writers - and published writers as well - are mortified when they get a bad review on Amazon. I know I used to be. But the thing is, bad reviews fall into two distinct categories. Those which give you constructive feedback and those which are just totally unconstructive. Take my last review for "die Stunde X". Apparently, the reader found it to be "outstandingly bad" (I feel the same way about most books by Martina Cole and Andy McNab, though I still read their stuff). He goes on to state that the book is banal and the characters are two-dimensional. In fairness, I wrote the book twenty odd years ago, and my characterizations weren't that strong back then (I was still learning to write - give a guy a break, and all that). Now, it could be said that I take the guy's criticism on board - though I do tend to disagree that the book is "banal" or "outstandingly bad" (such negative superlatives have no place in reviews written by nobodies). The book sales alone for its sequel would tend to disprove that (if you think the first book is shit, you certainly won't buy its follow-up). But delving deeper into the review, which only took a few seconds, I found that guy had reviewed only two other books and had described both of them as being pretty rubbish as well - he's a regular Mr-One-Star reviewer. It's one thing to write reviews, but surely this guy must have read at least one book that he actually likes? And there's the thing. People usually only write a review if they absolutely loved a book or absolutely hated it. The fact that this guy can only criticize negatively speaks volumes. At first, I was upset - for about 60 seconds - but the review came on royalties day, so I just cracked open a bottle of champagne and forgot about it.

What I'm saying is this. If you're a new writer, you're going to feel really depressed if you get a bad review. Don't be. Take on board any of the criticism you manage to find within the review, consider whether the reviewer has a point, and perhaps learn a lesson from it. Then consider the fact that reviewer is probably just a bog-standard reader who has never written a book (readers are fantastic people, but they're not writers), and your book probably just doesn't appeal to him or her, and it's really nothing personal. And if you're a prolific writer, a) you will learn more about writing with each book, each short story, that you write, b) you will start to make a few book sales and earn a bit of cash and c) you will get to the point where you just don't give a fuck about banal reviews by people with nothing better to do with their lives than rubbish the hard work of others. Remember - there are no monuments to critics ...

How to fucking concentrate

My mind is a mess. Constantly, I'm thinking of too many things at once. It gets worse when the manic part of my baby bipolar kicks in. I stay awake for hours, I start working on one book, switch to another, before leaving that to consider a fresh, new short. I take a break to change the playlist on Spotify, and then become embroiled in a debate on Facebook. Then I'll spend an hour lying on my bed thinking of new problems for my characters to face.

It's no secret that I can write fast. I can write 5,000 words in an evening, more so if fuelled by alcohol in my local pub, where no one ever talks to me. My record is 10,000 words in an evening. Of course, that's a first draft and sometimes subsequent drafts change drastically. But I could, if I put my mind to it, write a 100,000 word thriller in 10 days. And yet, I don't spend all day, every day, writing. I wish I could. But there are myriad distractions. If I write on a computer, it may ding to tell me that some wanker has disagreed with my politically incorrect post on Facebook. A friend might email me, and I'll have a chat with them. When I've had a mind to, there is the distraction of Internet dating sites, where I have learnt a new tactic - to view someone's profile without contacting them. That's like a cat shitting on your doorstep. You know he's been there, he's paid attention, but he can't be arsed to do anything other than take a shit. Someone might text me. I might start to sing along to a song and decide to get up and dance. The TV will catch my eye and I'll have to watch another episode of Spartacus - just because. I could be writing one book and think to myself, "I'm not feeling this." And if I'm not feeling it as the writer, then the reader definitely won't be feeling it.

I need to concentrate.

And here's the irony. The majority of my income comes from writing. Sure, it's not enough to live a decent existence (they'd never give me a fucking mortgage), and common sense would tell me that I should spend more time writing - especially if it's my "job". But then, because it's my "job", I like to skive off every now and then. And because I'm the boss, I can actually do that. But when I skive, my salary stays the same. If I work, there is the potential for it to increase. But then, because I'm not motivated by money, I'll skive off a bit more. And that vicious circle just keeps going round and round and round ...

I do need to concentrate.

I need to concentrate on just one book at a time, and get it finished. I'm working on "One Eight", I think about "Dark Satanic Mills". Both are halfway complete, yet "One Eight" will be around 70,000 words, whereas "Dark Satanic Mills" is already 150,000 words. And then, to compound things, I started to write another novel, "Smuggler's Blues" - very personal to me. And that doesn't even include the ideas in my head, the books for which I've yet to put serious pen to paper.

The thing is, most writers will churn out a book a year, and I used to think that was pretty poor. Three months to write, three months to edit, six months to publication. So surely two a year is better? But sitting in the driving seat, it's not so easy. And let's not even mention the apathy of the "public" to my serious books, ones like "Besotted", "Putrid Underbelly" and "Maggie's Children". The stuff I enjoy writing. My "public" likes "die Stunde X" and "nach Schema F", so then I feel compelled to write another book in the series. But writing to order is a difficult thing to do. I do want to write the third in that series, but I need to be in the zone.

Shit. It's not easy being a writer ...

And yet, I've just written these last 700 words in about 5 minutes. Mindless cock-babble.

PS - I've not edited it. I'm sure there are mistakes ...

Swearing in boozers

I dunno when it happened. When someone decided that it wasn't acceptable to swear in pubs. But it seems as though that's the way things are now.

I started drinking in pubs when I was 15. Now, I can't remember being hugely foul-mouthed at that age, but the older I got, the more I swore. And in my early twenties, all through to my thirties, right up until about the time I hit forty, I would swear in pubs. All of that cunting, bollocking, cunty, shithousing, wanky, fucking cunt-mouth twattery that you could ever imagine. And then sometime, I dunno, about four years ago, one landlord said, "Can you stop swearing?" Of course, I was pissed, so I slipped on my best shit-eating grin and said something like, "What the fuck?" The reply was, "I'm serious." And there was some allusion to there being other customers in the pub who didn't appreciate swearing.

Now, perhaps this disapproval of swearing in pubs coincided with the downturn in people using pubs, which coincided, probably, with the smoking ban and massively cheap beer available in supermarkets. And perhaps the landlords who disapproved of swearing were desperate to keep hold of their middle-class "drinkers" (in very inverted fucking commas, if you please) because they had more disposable income than us plebs. But let's honest. Let me spell this out in as simple a terms as you can understand. Back then, when the swearing ban began, it was swearers who kept the pubs alive. These guys who drank perhaps 10 pints a night, and whose language became more coarse the more pints you drew, they were the ones paying to keep pubs in business. And the middle-class, poncy twats who turned up once a week to have a Guinness surge and a vodka and tonic for their missus, together with a cheap meal on your menu, well, they were never going to be there every night of the week, were they?

But here's the thing. Like the smoking ban, the swearing ban has diminished the appeal of pubs for many people. People stopped going to pubs, because they could get cheaper booze at home and they could smoke in their own houses. And now more and more people like me are drinking at home, because they can swear in their own house. Me, I can drink cheap booze, I can slip into mockney and say, "Fackinell!" and nobody frowns at me because I'm "working class" or because I've used a word they don't approve of.

My local village pub decided they didn't want to have copies of the free magazine The Literary Commune available to its customers because it featured bad language. And when I was told this, I just thought to myself, "What the fuck? Why am I sitting in here spending, I dunno, twenty quid a night to drink alongside poncy, middle-class wankers who probably don't even fucking read anyway, when I can drink at home?" The local boozer is all very posh and la-de-da now, and I feel like a complete piece of cheap shit whenever I wander in there.

On the plus side for pubs, this tactic seems to have worked, because the local boozer is full of people who eat food and who drink barely fuck-all, whilst at the same time, not swearing. That's a nice earner for the boozer, admittedly. Posh people seem to have taken over pubs, and us riff-raff really aren't welcome. But it won't last. There will be another revolution. Perhaps next they will stop us from drinking alcohol completely in pubs?

But whereas the smoking ban was something enforced upon landlords by the government, the swearing ban was something which landlords themselves introduced. I even saw one pub in a town called Oakham where the owners had seen fit to place a sign to the effect that people who swore would be asked to leave.

I dunno. Pubs, beer, lairyness - it all lends itself to swearing. But the swearing ban? It's the death knell for me.

Being a writer ...

Someone much more famous than me, and probably a much better writer than me, said (and I'm paraphrasing here, because I can't remember the quote) that you can call yourself a writer when you use a royalty cheque to pay for your electricity bill. Well, in 2014, I achieved that a number of times. So officially, I can call myself a writer.

But in all honesty, is that what writing is about? Are we only judged to be something if we make money out of it? Can we only apply that label on ourselves if we make enough money from writing to pay our bills? Now, don't get me wrong. I like having a bit of cash. And making a tiny amount of money from writing is actually a fantastic feeling - all of those strangers, paying to read something you've written - but that's not why I write. I write because I love doing it. I love sitting in a pub, cranking open my little laptop, and churning out a few hundred - or even a few thousand - words. I love taking out a notepad in a library and scribbling down as many words as possible until my hand aches. Hell, I've even written stuff on a post-it note when I've been bored during training sessions in a workplace. That makes me a writer. Wanting to write. And even on the occasions where I've backed myself into a corner in a story, and I'm suffering from writer's block, the fact that I have "writer's" block, well, doesn't that make me a writer also?

I've even had people who know me say to me, "Well, you're not really a writer, are you? Because you work at such and such a place." They don't comprehend the shitness of what they have just said. What can I say to that? Well, have you read any of my stuff? Can you write a 100,000 word novel? Have hundreds of people paid you to read something you've written? In all honesty, I don't expect every person I know to buy or read one of my books. I know a few musicians (I'm honoured to call some of them friends), but if they released a screamo-based CD, the chances are I wouldn't buy it because I'm not into screamo. I might give it a listen, out of courtesy. But what I wouldn't do is say, "Yeah, but you're not really a musician, because you just play local gigs and you've only sold a few CDs."

And here's the crux of it all. People who create - be they artists, musicians or writers - they generally stick together. They recognize the hard work of their fellow creators and even if they cannot fully appreciate it, because it's not to their own personal taste, they wouldn't seek to diminish what that person has done.

There is too much snobbery in the creative world. People who play the guitar, sing songs, write their own stuff or even perform in a covers' band at the weekend, do we consider them to be musicians? People who paint pictures or come out with some fantastic pencil drawings, do we consider them to be artists? The fact that these people are not "full-time" musicians or singers or artists, does that really make any difference? They are all doing something which other people cannot do. The label applies, irrespective of how much money they make. When you go to see a band churning out a cover version of "Sex on Fire" in your local boozer, you don't turn to your friend and say, "Yeah, that factory worker in the band, he sounds great." You say, "The singer sounds great."

I'm currently involved in a small project called The Literary Commune. They've published a couple of things by me. The magazine, which has a tiny readership, is given away free to those who would choose to read it. The contributors to the magazine, they receive nothing, but they do have the satisfaction of knowing that their stuff is being read by interested people. I would say that if you're interested in writing or if you're interested in reading fresh, original and gritty stuff, drop them a line. They're on Facebook here - https://www.facebook.com/theliterarycommune.

And remember - being a writer is not about how much you write, it's not about how much money you make. It's about the fact that sometimes you sit there and curse because you have no pen or paper and you have to write sentences, paragraphs and plots in your head, and hope that you'll remember them by the time you get home.