On Writing by A.L. Kennedy

Author:A.L. Kennedy [A.L. Kennedy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

XLIV

I’M LYING DOWN. This is as close as I get to a hobby. Over the weekend I attempted to establish sleeping as a further leisure activity, but I’m afraid that the vast list of things I have to do before most days break – or, indeed, I myself break – made that impossible. So lying down and working: it’s almost as good as a rest.

Not that I am complaining about being in work. Being in work is a good thing. Being in work when you are self-employed and me – and your employer is therefore almost as mentally sturdy as Charlie Sheen – is a less good thing. Not that I’m in any way chemically enhanced, or unhanced. I can forget why I’ve ended up in the kitchen again and am holding a single shoe without any assistance from prescribed or clandestinely imported substances. When I shake my head my brain thumps against its sides like a neatly parcelled corpse in the boot of a slewing car.

Meanwhile, I have been asked to write a little about the typist’s progress from hoping-to-be-published-anywhere-at-all-ever to dear-God-shoot-me-just-in-the-shin-then-I’ll-get-a-day-off. This is, of course, both a happy progression and something that should be much better organised in my case. Here, I’ll try and look at what we might call the very early days. The awful and wonderful early days.

So, to begin at the beginning. My own experience of starting out was haphazard and almost certain to fail. I didn’t really intend to write, I was simply living in a tiny, cold bedsit with no other ways of being constructive. (And if your only way to prove yourself useful is by producing a steady trickle of maimed and ugly short stories, you should probably take a good look at yourself.) I joined a writer’s group and then remembered that I don’t like groups. I sent off stories without really researching my target magazines, which duly returned my efforts, often accompanied only by a scribble on a square of paper slightly smaller than a commemorative stamp. I had occasional successes and an encouraging letter of rejection, or – dear God – an acceptance, or – good heavens – not just a free copy of Quentin’s Quarterly Gallimaufry, but a cheque for twenty quid could light up my month. I was more often disappointed than not, but I was also learning that I cared about this. I cared so much that I would start again after every sad envelope flopped in, write something else, forget that it hurt to be knocked back.

I was writing by hand with later multicoloured corrections as nervousness and tinkering racked up rewrites. Rewriting in the days before personal computers was something of a grind . . . A bit of planning before I’d started and then stepping back for an overview would have helped me much more than altering things blindly and investing affection, rather than criticism. As it was, I ended up with page after page of Jackson Pollocked nonsense. I didn’t know any better.

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