I began my writing career in 2000 at the age of 50. I was aware that the majority of famous writers hit their stride in their thirties and forties, and that I was making a late start. Undeterred, I told myself that my muse had been in no hurry, preferring to allow me sufficient time to accumulate a rich store of experience to draw on before releasing my pent-up creative energy.
It was also
around this time that it dawned on me that I had finally developed a world
view. I had given up the futile search for the meaning and purpose of life, and
had reached conclusion concerning human nature and my place in the cosmos,
which I put into print in a 4500 word essay entitled, Why I Haven’t Killed
Myself, Yet.
While my wife went out to work, and between
home-schooling our two children and performing domestic drudgery, I set to work
on a semi-autobiographical novel that I called The Life of Henry Fuckit.
This took more than five years to write in longhand (I could still see well
enough to put pen to paper), and at least another year for my teenage daughter
to turn it into a Word document. I then approached a publisher and began the
first of many demeaning encounters with literary gatekeepers.
Around this time, 2007, I started to use a PC. Having
hit a brick wall with Henry, I decided to try my hand at some commercial
fiction, and wrote Pop-splat, a fast-paced modern novel with plenty of
violence and sex in it. After three
rejections I began to explore the possibility of self-publication. My wife
reluctantly agreed to ‘invest’ R25000 in the printing of 1000 copies of my
book, which I assured her would fly off the shelves and make us a profit of
R50000.
I tenaciously badgered the books editors of
numerous magazines an newspapers, sending them copies of the novel and
requesting a review. This proved a lengthy process but eventually yielded
several positive results, which I used as promotional material.
“How many books have you sold?” my financial
backer asked me after a year. “When am I going to get my money back?”
I had to admit that only some 200 copies had
flown off the shelves, and nearly 700 were still in the printer’s warehouse
waiting to fly.
“All I need is a lucky break. If some
influential person was to endorse the book it would take off, I’m sure.”
It was about this time that I began to consider
another reason for why I had not become a sest-selling author, apart from the
‘lucky break’ excuse. Maybe Pop-splat wasn’t such a great read after all, and the
writer was a little short on talent?
Despite a great deal of help and encouragement
from my daughter and son, who set up a website and Facebook page to promote the
book, sales dwindled to zero, and I was obliged to admit defeat on the Pop-splat
front. However, in the meantime, I had continued writing and completed a second
novel, Kikaffir, in 2011.
“Have you heard of Smashwords?” my son asked
me. “It’s an online publisher that sells ebooks. You provide them with your
manuscript and they make it available on their platform, and take a small
commission from every sale.”
I was through with mainstream publishers, so I
agreed to give it a try. By this I meant I would be grateful if he went ahead
and did the necessary formatting, cover design and submission, which all
entailed a considerable amount of skilled labour.
Over the following decade I continued writing
and he kept placing the results on Smashwords but, I regret to report, our
efforts were almost entirely in vain, for sales over the years amounted to
hardly more than $100.
“Have you heard of Print On Demand publishing?”
Technology had moved along and it was now
possible to self-publish anything from five to a hundred, or more copies at a
relatively low cost.
Again, I managed to wheedle a few thousand rand
out of my long-suffering wife, and we had 20 copies each of Kikaffir, Shark
Alley Shootout and Strandveld Private Investigators printed.
“It should be dead easy to sell them locally,
and then the word will spread and I can have more printed.”
The Gansbaai Book Exchange sold half a dozen
copies, while the Book Cottage in Hermanus eventually told me after two years
to come and collect my books, as they had been unable to make a single sale.
Somebody suggested I try the flea markets in Pearly Beach and Stanford. Three Pop-splats
and two Shark Alley Shootouts. Pathetic!
“Well,” I said to my wife at the end of 2020,
“it doesn’t look like I’ll be asking you for any more money to further my
writing career.”
It was with that acknowledgement of failure
that I concluded my final attempt to prove that arsehole headmaster wrong.
Towards the end of 1967, which
was my last year at Fish Hoek High School, this pedagogic prick called my
parents in for an interview. He told them it was his sad duty to inform them
that their son would never amount to much in life. Because I was dull-witted
and lacking in any God-given talent, my prospects were bleak. It would be
futile to hope that I might avoid the usual disappointment, boredom and pain
associated with a life of mediocrity.
Well, it turned out that he wasn’t far wrong in
his assessment. What he didn’t get right, though, was the boredom bit. I have always been, and
remain so to this day, interested in everything under the sun. I find the
natural world and the antics of humans endlessly fascinating., and approach
each day with fresh curiosity.
I now feel a certain degree of embarrassment
that I should have deluded myself into believing I possessed enough talent to
become a successful author. I also experience a strong sense of guilt when I
consider how much time and effort, not to mention money, my wife and children
have expended over the years in supporting me in my foolhardy literary
ambitions. I can only hope that they do not harbour resentment or a sense of
betrayal after realising they had allowed themselves to be persuaded to participate
in such a misguided venture. My son, especially, has spent years trying to
encourage me and promote my writing. Upon reflection, was it all for nothing?
It is my hope that he will one day turn what he has learned from the experience
into something of value and make it worthwhile.
Finally, although this signals the end of my
writing career, it does not mean I will stop writing as a hobby. Hell, no! I intend to
continue examining life and putting my thoughts into words. If I was to call a
halt to this creative process the consequences would be dire. In the words of
Henry Fuckit, “I'll be destroyed, totally and utterly. My spinal column
will dismantle itself and fall in pieces upon the floor. My inflamed eyeballs
will inflate and stand forth from my head before rupturing and collapsing back
into their sockets. My liver will dissolve, my kidneys vitrify and my spleen
will desiccate and crumble into dust. My poor heart will squawk and then
shrivel to the size of a pea. My testicles will retract and putrefy with shame.
My pride and joy will fall down dead, turn brown then black, and hang between
my legs curing like a piece of biltong. My hair will turn white and fill my
comb with tuft upon tuft. My tongue will thicken and become coated in lichen,
choking my airway, blocking my gullet. My teeth will fall out with a clatter
like ice into a bucket. My intestines will reverse the peristaltic flow and
excrement will ooze from my nostrils. And my brain! The reaction of my brain to
the terrible insult of being made to give up writing will be truly cataclysmic.
My brainstem, cerebellum and cerebrum will fuse together into a dense, lifeless
mass like a golf ball. The process will be instantaneous and the resulting
vacuum in the cranial cavity will suck in stirrups, anvils and hammers to
strike my defunct brain and ricochet out through my tympanic membranes. My
entire nervous system, central and peripheral, will burn out in a storm of
electrochemical fireworks and I will fall to the ground. Destroyed. Totally
fucked in my moer."
Yes, that is what will happen
if I stop writing, sure as night follows day.
Anybody for a FREE copy of Pop-splat?
078 455 7355
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