we remember something we need to order on Amazon. Then with a flash of guilt, we realize we forgot to call an old friend back two days ago. We know she’ll chat for ages, but get it out the way, and afterwards we’ll have a clear morning for writing. Or what’s left of the morning. Ooops, what’s that van pulling up outside? Aha, the plumber! Have to go down and let him in, make him a cuppa, find some biscuits …
But at the end of the day there is no escaping that if we want to make a living as authors, then we need to write. A mantra that always spurs me on is You cannot edit a blank page. It’s a sign that all of us should have on our desks. But that business of getting started in the morning is always hard. Graham Greene, one of my favourite authors, had a neat solution to this issue: he would always stop writing in the middle of a sentence. That way, his first task the next the morning was to finish the sentence – and it got him straight back into the flow.
It may not sound it, but I do actually love writing, although it took me years of perseverance before I could make a living from it, and during all that time I had to do a day job. My first three novels were never published (luckily, in retrospect!) My next three, not very good spy thrillers, were published but sold a negligible amount of copies – around 1,800 in hardback and 3,000 in paperback. But I kept going because I believed in myself. I changed direction, wrote two more novels, one a kidnap story and one a political assassination which were never published. Then, with my ninth novel Possession, a supernatural thriller, I struck lucky. Every major British publisher bid for the book and it was auctioned around the world, going into twenty-three languages. Finally, twenty-one years after I had sat down to type the first line of my first novel, I was able to actually make a living as an author.
Possession hit number two on the bestseller lists. But it was to be another fourteen novels and twenty years before I finally achieved my dream of hitting that coveted Sunday Times number one spot.
I’m seldom happier than when I’m hammering away at my keyboard and the story is flowing. I especially love the satisfaction of coming up with an inventive description for something, or a character I’m pleased with, or a plot twist that makes me punch the air with excitement. But it’s not been easy and writing never is. The hours are long and often lonely, and when I’ve finished I’m a bag of nerves waiting for my agent and my editor’s reactions – and then, much later, the reactions of my readers. Those nervous peeps at Amazon to see how the star ratings are going. Followed by an anxious wait for the first chart news … Plus the knowledge that I’m on a treadmill to turn out a new book every year – and my one golden rule is that with each new novel I want to raise the bar.
So, what is my motivation? Simple. First and foremost, it is the way I know best how to make a living. And that I want to do my best to try to please my loyal readers by making each book I write better than the last. I could list a dozen other factors, such as getting even with teachers at school who never thought I would amount to anything. Getting my revenge on the bullies who tormented me at school. A sense that I have something to say. A mission to try to understand human nature and why people do the things that they do. It is all of these and more. But at the end of the day my wife and I need food on our table and our animals need food in their bowls.
The late, odious film director Michael Winner was once asked by a precious actor, whom he had instructed to walk down a street, what exactly his motivation was in walking down the street. Displaying all his normal charm, Winner bellowed at him, ‘You’re walking down that street because I’m fucking paying you to walk down that street!’
Oscar Wilde, another writer whose work I love and admire, lamented on his deathbed, ‘I’ve lived beyond my means so I suppose I will have to die beyond my means.’ His drive to produce his great work was produced largely from his need to make money. He used his gruelling American lecture tours to help boost his sales there, and once famously said, ‘Of course, if one had the money to go to America, one would not go.’
Helping his nation to win the Second World War did little to help Sir Winston Churchill’s bank account. Having financially stretched himself buying his beloved country estate, Chartwell, much later he began writing the first of his six-volume opus, The Second World War, because he needed the money.
In 1974, scammed out of everything he had by a Ponzi scheme and left deeply in debt, Jeffery Archer penned Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less in a last-ditch attempt to stave off bankruptcy. It worked, launching a career that would make him one of the richest novelists on the planet.
It is pretty simple. If you are a professional author, money is going to be pretty high up your motivation list. Over the years I’ve met a number of people who told me they have writers’ block. But I cannot remember a single author who writes for a living ever telling me that. What other profession complains of block – other than perhaps plumbers? You don’t hear of solicitors complaining they have solicitors’ block, or taxi drivers saying they have cab drivers’ block, or accountants having accountants’ block.
I can’t imagine any professional author I know saying to his or her family, ‘Sorry everyone, I have writer’s block, I’m afraid there’s no food today.’
Sure, writing isn’t easy – if it was, everyone would be doing it. As it is, a great number of people do, mistakenly, think it’s a doddle. Margaret Atwood tells of the time she was at a cocktail party and had a what-do-you-do-what-do-you-do conversation with a rather pompous man. In response to her question he said, ‘I’m a brain surgeon. What do you do?’
When she replied that she was an author, he immediately responded, somewhat arrogantly, ‘Actually I’m planning to write a novel when I retire.’
‘How very interesting,’ Atwood retorted. ‘Because when I retire, I’m planning to be a brain surgeon.’
I often wonder, did he ever write that novel? And if he did, was it published? I’m doubtful of both, for one simple reason: lack of motivation. As a successful brain surgeon he was probably wealthy, living a nice lifestyle. In his mid-sixties, was he seriously going to lock himself away in his study for months and months of hard grind, trying to forge a whole new career, then go on the road and engage in social media? And then spend the next ten years writing more books to try to build his name? I doubt it, because I just don’t think he would have had that crucial motivation.
Thirty-five novels on, I still get a huge buzz out of the page proofs arriving. Out of seeing my publisher’s first cover ideas. It was a dream when I first began writing that one day I would see a copy of my book on an airport bookshelf. Now that dream comes true pretty much every time I enter an airport bookstore. I know I’ve been lucky, but I also I know how easy it is for an author’s sales to slide if they don’t keep up their standards. I guess my biggest motivation of all today is to keep that dream.
One question facing all writers is: how do I make a living? For anyone who isn’t independently wealthy, the challenge is to strike a balance between time spent writing, often with little or no immediate financial reward, and working to put bread on the table.
Many people dream of becoming full-time writers. Research undertaken in recent years, most notably by the Society of Authors, is discouraging: authors’ earnings seem, in broad general terms, to be low and in steady decline. And even if giving up the day job were feasible, would it be such a good idea?
Not according to Celia Fremlin, a Detection Club member who coped with demanding domestic commitments while pursuing a successful career as a writer. On her family website is a letter she sent in 1984, in which she said, ‘The first bit of advice I’d give to anyone aspiring to be a writer is to start by deciding
