Dead end…Again?

However great the phenomenon of reading parties and Author Table Concerts of J.K Rowling were, she did us a disservice – She made it look easy to the outside world. Yes, she was struggling but she has a career as some writers do, the old stereotype of writing being the profession of rich retirees has hardly waned. But what about the rest of us?

Muse has been known to drop the ball on several occasions, Van Gogh was not present when the world saw his work, our most beloved and Brilliant Jane Austen sacrificed a great deal to be as esteemed as she is. Thomas Hardy was likely bipolar and was victimized by a world needing a happy ending. If they didn’t occur in his life how was he expected to write them??

The new Standards set by pop culture means you’re only a writer if you make it, not only make it but produce the film adaptation and agree on merchandising!! Anne Rice made her debut novel in 1976, the Rembrandt -like Film Adaptation took Twenty-Eight years!!? I don’t wanna wait twenty-eight years for validation via pop culture!

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And yet most of us are not even that lucky, most of us are no different than children writing in the sand, then watch as the tide washes our words away. In the Era of Self -Publishing, vagabond writers like myself thought it would be easier, it’s not. For the wet Sand was replaced by cold cyberspace, where your overlooked, neglected, little book is one among millions – Like a Scholarly Milky Way.

The older you get the harder it is to convince yourself your novels will find the light of day. It’s even harder when it’s all you’ve ever really done as all your other crazy ideas to wrangle a profession have failed. Yet for some reason, nature gave writers the most perseverence because I doubt any other creative line of work is this thankless and unrewarding

And yet at the same time we have our own reward, we have characters and story arcs that nobody else has. If we’re lucky enough we’ve made worlds and there’s design capabilities that help you realise those worlds. The reward most writers settle for is the idea that these stories will be our only will and testament of being here, of trying. And maybe some day…it’ll be seen. After sixteen years of trying that’s all I really want…That’s all any of us want.