For someone who wasn’t planning on establishing
a new career working with disabled people I was doing pretty well. In fact most aspects of my life were chugging
along quite nicely. I had actually
managed to achieve my seven hundred and fifty words per day and had finished my
first novel. Now what I needed was a
typewriter and I bought myself a second hand machine. This was not my first typewriter as I had
borrowed one before. It was a tiny
little manual portable typewriter but the person who lent me it kept asking for
it back, not that he used it, but it honestly felt that his attitude was that,
if I am a useless waste of space then I am not going to help you get on. And he
was supposed to be family.
I remember that the person selling the machine lived
about one mile away from me so with my two eldest boys we went for a
wander. They were only asking for
fifteen pounds for the machine so it was a bargain. I liked the look of the contraption as it
appeared to be quite solid so I bought it there and then. I know, impulsive or what, tell me about it. I couldn’t believe how heavy the thing was
and it nearly ripped the arms off me carrying it home, next time, I promised
myself I would use the car or the Wobblie Waggon. I set the machine up on my desk. I had followed the Stephen King rule for
writers, which is to have nothing more than a blank wall in front of you, no
panoramic windows with views to excite the senses, or distract, just a blank
wall.
There was such a satisfying thunk when you
pressed a key, any key on the typewriter.
It really was quite vicious and when you were in your groove and
battering out word after word, the whole house would be shaking. It was brilliant. It was a great feeling to know that I could
actually produce the amount of words required for a standard novel. The only problem was that I had written it in
long hand and now had to set about typing the thing. To produce my seven hundred and fifty words per
day now was much easier with the typewriter, but to convert the novel from long
hand to typewritten was a real pain and as I had no training in typing it really
was one fingered typing, with the tip of the tongue jammed firmly between tight
lips.
My spirits were given a lift as I had heard
that I had been accepted on to a course with the Arvon Foundation. I was quite excited about it as it really was
a golden opportunity. I had received
some information about the course but didn’t really know anything about the two
professional writers who would be facilitating the course. All I knew is that one was a novelist and one was
a poet. Well, as far as I was concerned that was fifty percent of the course
gone for me for I didn’t really have much time for poets. Yes, I liked the established and classic
poets we had been brought up with and I was aware of some giants of our time
like Seamus Heaney, or even the magnificent John Cooper Clarke, but most of the
poets I knew wrote about flowers or God and really were of no relevance to me whatsoever.
I got some other correspondence too but from social
workers. This time they had almost finalised
the process for people in Northern Ireland who had been adopted and who wished
to find out information about their birth parents. As you would expect from useless social workers
and pen pushing civil servants they were not going to make it easy for anyone. They said that I would have to undergo a
mandatory one and one half hour interview with a social worker to determine if
I was mature enough to receive information about my birth mother. I am sure many of you will understand that
steam was pouring from my ears. Not only
was I angry that some underachieving social worker was going to assess me, to
determine if I was mature enough, but that they were only going to release details
of my mother.
As I had been told all my life my mother had
died giving birth to me so what was the bloody point in that. Now, armed with
my industrial electric typewriter I was able to fire off a decent amount of
letters complaining and arguing with them and at the same time rally my Mensa
friends to keep the pressure up on the cretins who were supposedly in charge of
this fiasco. They were also offering
three choices of location for the mandatory interview with the social
worker. You could be interviewed in the
town or city where you were born, where you now live or, to tell you the truth
I forget the third option, all I was interested in was getting another face to
face opportunity to tell a social worker what I thought about them.
I had also won a writing competition in Northern
Ireland and had been invited over to receive my prize. It was only a couple of hundred pounds and
although I was pleased at winning I didn’t really want to parade myself in front
of people. I’m sure many people, would
relish the chance of getting their mug in to the newspapers and media but I’m
not sure why, I wasn’t interested in that side of things. I understood the need to promote yourself and
your work but couldn’t really find the enthusiasm for it; the glam life wasn’t
for me. Don’t get me wrong I wasn’t shy
or a shrinking violet in any shape or form; in fact I had been approached by
some men again. This time they wanted me
to go away to a hotel with them, and they would pay me money if I accompanied them.
With all the reading and research I had
completed I understood that the life of a writer was not just being confined to
sitting at a desk staring at a blank wall. Apart from the different forms of
writing there were so many other activities you could get involved in where you
could earn money. You could teach
writing, you could visit writing groups and give a talk about writing or you
could, as I had now been asked, join the after dinner speaking circuit. A group of business men in the North West of
England got together every month for a formal meal where they invited various after
dinner speakers. Now it was my turn. I
was lucky enough to know that there was a section in the Writers and Artists
yearbook that would not only give me a few pointers but would set out the rates
of pay and conditions that I should ask for.
At the time I was aware of famous people like
Jennifer Saunders, an English comedienne, who was earning fifteen thousand
pounds per engagement. One or two of
those a year would do me, but as I was a new writer I was at the bottom of the
pile, the lowest rung on the ladder, I would often say that I started at the
bottom and liked it. I could only ask
for two hundred and fifty pounds as a fee for the evening. Although, and thank you Writers and Artists
Yearbook, I could also ask that I be picked up from my home and taken to the
venue, be given a free meal and drink throughout the evening and then be taken
back home, so it was a decent enough remuneration package for my first ever
gig. Well; you would think so. I had been asked to give a forty five minute
after dinner speech for which I would get a total package of just over three hundred
pounds. Not bad for forty five minutes
work and that’s what I thought.
It took me seven full working days to write the
speech. This was not a situation where
you would stand up and wing it for forty five minutes. They wanted to be entertained, they wanted
jokes. So when you begin to see the
preparation that goes in to it, then you can see that you really do have to
work for your money. As the evening drew
closer I have to admit that some nerves began to set in. This was going to be a part of my new life,
my new career so I was going in head first, I hoped my experience of speaking
to large groups in the air force would stand me in good stead, but I knew that
in the air force I had only spoken to groups of fifty people on average, now I
was to be faced with five hundred people who were paying for the privilege.
I was quite surprised at myself as I walked in
to the hotel, a medium sized country hotel in a local village. I asked for an orange juice. I was nervous and I could drink anything I wanted
for free, but I knew that I was there as a professional and so decided to act
like one, for once in my life at least.
I was seated at the head table and throughout the meal threw my eye
around the room. I could feel the nerves
building and my mouth really was quite dry when I was introduced and invited to
stand. I started to speak, regulating my
voice and compensating for my accent. I
found myself almost splitting in two. I
had learned my speech well and almost delivered it automatically but at the
same time I found myself scanning the faces in the room.
When I knew a punch line was coming I would
quickly scan the room and if I noticed a person who didn’t react or smile or laugh
I found myself focusing on that person and delivering the next portion to them,
so that they would now laugh and so I continued, realising that I was controlling
the room. It was a great feeling and I
loved the applause. I wasn’t expecting
the forty five minute question and answer session afterwards, but took it on
the chin. Later in the bar, holding a glass
of decent single malt whisky, I accepted the envelope of used bank notes and squirreled
it away in my jacket pocket. I had
really enjoyed the evening, the long seven days preparation had all been worth
it, just for the experience alone, but I wasn’t convinced that the ratio of remuneration
to input was worth it when I was approached by a man. This time he wanted me to give an after
dinner speech to a group he was a member of in Warrington. I gave him my telephone number so that we
could finalise the arrangement and then I began to realise that all the hard
work had already been done, suddenly the ratio of input versus remuneration was
turning very much in my favour.
No comments:
Post a Comment