Write For Love.

I run a writing group over on the other Platform-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named. (Isn’t it tragic that all the tech titans are so jealous of each other that they make their algorithm elves cast you into tech-Siberia if you so much as type the name of one of their competitors? Heaven forfend you should put up a link.) On this writing group I am currently running a challenge called How To Write A Book In Ninety Days. I got rather passionate this morning about why we all should write - for love, of course - and I rather enjoyed the passion, so I thought I’d give it to you. As a little extra bonus, if you like.

Here it is:

Day Forty-Six: How To Write A Book In Ninety Days.

The wind is raging outside my window and I can feel the bright chill in the air and autumn is coming, which makes me happy. Summer, I often think, is slightly oversold. The horses are fed up with the flies and the heat and long for dewy mornings and no insects, and so do I.

There is that marvellous back to school feeling of sharpening my pencils and getting out all my rubbers. (This is metaphorical. Although I did love rubbers when I was a child and had a whole array of them.)

We are half way through our ninety day challenge and I’m picking up the pace. I can see the ground over the distant hill where the finish line will be. I did actually think I had finished yesterday, but it was a false dawn.

I think over and over again of why I am writing this book, and why I am writing this challenge. Why on earth do I show up for you, most of whom are complete strangers, when there is no money involved? I have to make my living, yet I’m writing a book which may easily sell seven copies, and I come here faithfully, and have done for years, to give something to the group. Business-minded people tell me this is mad.

I do it because I have a great big socking Why. (And not just because I like to think of myself sometimes as a saintly saint. Although I am quite invested in being a decent person.)

The Why is that I wish I had had a me when I was a novice writer. I got five days with Peter Carey, which was magic, and which I shall never forget, and I had a shrink for a while who was also a playwright, so he sometimes said things about writing. But there was no one to guide me. I read Anne Lamott and Dorothea Brande over and over again. I wrote truly terrible novels. I wish someone had been by my side, although I am proud of that young woman for trying so hard and never giving up. Also, I had money in those days - my grandmother had left me some, and I thought it would last forever - so I didn’t have to do anything. I could have drifted from one bar to another. Instead, I taught myself to write.

Also, now I don’t have money I know what it’s like not to be able to afford things. I was so extravagant in my youth. No longer. I know that there are those of you who worry about the bills, so this is for you.

You have to have a big Why to write a book, because the chances are it won’t sell many copies. Even if you get a massive deal with one of the big publishers, you probably won’t sell many copies. I saw a rather random woman on the internet not long ago looking sad because she knew that she would never earn out her advance. (She’d got six figures.) Nicola Sturgeon, who is in the news just now, got three hundred thousand pounds and she won’t earn that out in a million years. Who on earth is going to buy a book about the politics of Holyrood by one of its most divisive figures?

So when you read about these huge deals, don’t think you are in it for that. Besides, advances are divided up into four tranches and by the time you get the last one you work out that you’ve been labouring for not that very much, in the end, once you’ve given 15% to your agent and 50% to the tax man.

I know I bang on about this all the time, but it may be the most valuable thing I tell you. You have to do it for love. That’s the only good Why. Tell your story because you love your story. Tell it because seven people will adore it. Write it down because you are good at writing and it’s lovely to do things you are good at. If you have any lurking desire for fame and fortune, go and become a YouTube influencer, or some such nonsense. This is purity corner, here. We are doing it for all the right reasons.

Don’t forget that. It will hurl you down the track.