Keeping it real:the case of the wannabe writer

Helen Simpson had written a book. She sat in an easy chair in her bedroom with a glass of wine in her hand, reading through the final draft. And when she came to the end she couldn’t help but smile to herself, began laughing gaily, and started tapping her hand on the table with genuine pleasure and satisfaction. ‘Oh it’s good’ she thought to herself ‘it really is good. Who’d have thought a year ago that I would have written a novel. I didn’t think I could do it, and yet here we are! And it really is good, I just know it.’

She had returned home a year ago to live with her parents. She had thrown in her job as a biology teacher, which she’d held for the past two years, to take a year out to try and write a novel. She was thirty-one now. She had begun writing just as a bit of fun in some ways, to see if she could do it, and just for her own personal pleasure. And rather unexpectedly she’d found that she was quite good at it, and so she’d decided to pack up her job and chance her hand at writing: and it had paid off.

Later that day she set about sending a copy to an agent. ‘They look friendly enough’ she thought as she browsed the website of a small firm. ‘Yes, they’ll do, they want works that are original and fresh, and I think I can safely say that mine is.’ She sent it off, to this one agency only, for she didn’t want to find herself in the unenviable position of turning down agents. She was too sensitive for that. With a feeling of satisfaction in her, of having reached the pinnacle of her mountain, she sat down in front of the TV for a nice relaxing evening. She’d been flat out with the book for so long now, that it was nice to take a break.

As she sat there though, her mind fell on her book and her impending fame and entry onto the literary scene. How nice it would all be! To be loved and admired for her writing. Yet she didn’t want to be rich. In fact it made her ill to imagine what money she might make. There could be a £250,000 advance! Good God! That was obscene. No, no, no she didn’t want all that. Literary fame would be enough. She would keep sufficient means for herself and give the rest to charity. She’d give it back to the people. It wasn’t appropriate for a writer to become rich.

The ensuing days were adrenaline filled, angst and nervy, as she eagerly awaited a response. And then some three weeks later it arrived. She opened it with a pounding heart.


Dear Miss Simpson,

Thank you for submitting your work to us. I am sorry to say that we will not be taking it on. We receive hundreds of manuscripts every year and of these we select only perhaps one or two that we feel really strongly about and wish to promote. This is not to say that your work is not good or that someone else may not take it on. We wish you all the best in your endeavours to get it published.


Yours Sincerely
Bla bla bla.


She was absolutely dumbstruck. What was this? A rejection? What? She’d never been expecting that. How could they reject her work? What? What was this about? How? What? Huh? She’d read extracts from some of the books the agency had taken on, and assuredly her work had been just as good, and frankly in a lot of cases better. Yet they’d just rejected her, dismissed her as though she was nothing. She was absolutely pole-axed.

Yet pole-axed though she was, she decided to now send out ten or so manuscripts to various agents and publishers, telling herself that ‘those amateur fools at that last silly little agency obviously don’t know what they’re talking about. They must be blind.’

But unfortunately over the next couple of months, the rejections rolled in and she was utterly confounded to be so easily dismissed when she had been so confident of success. Her life had taken a turn for the worse over the past couple of months, all the confidence and enthusiasm for life that she’d had while working on her novel had drained away in a hurry, and she looked pale, felt out of sorts, and was alone, angry and impudent.

‘What are all these rejections for?’ she said to herself bemused, lying on her bed doing nothing but moping, even though the sun shone and it was a beautiful day outside.

‘No it doesn’t make any sense’ and she curled over miserably and buried her head in her pillow. She had never really wanted to be a writer. It had not been something she had always dreamed of. But now that she’d written a book, a good book, a book that people would find entertaining, better than a lot of the novels that were published, she was desperate to see it in print. It seemed a gross injustice otherwise, and in any case she wanted her voice to be heard.

None of her friends or family had shown much interest in her new found talent; on the contrary they’d seemed rather resentful of it. And partly because she’d moved back home and partly because that’s just the way things are, her friends were now a long way off, scattered about here and there. She was simply left with her parents. And they’d noticed her change in mood. Her father came in to see her one day.

‘Helen are you alright?’ he said. ‘You know you can’t just mope about like this, when it’s such a beautiful day. What’s the matter with you? Has something happened?

‘Leave me alone’ she said, exactly as she had used to do when she was a teenager.

But in time she started to explain to her father the reason for her distress. She was glad to talk, to explain how she’d written a good book, but how she’d been rejected. And her father seemed to listen sympathetically. But he didn’t understand.

‘Look, you have to accept rejection, it’s all part of life. If those agents or publishers thought they could make money from your book, then they would have snapped you up: they’re no fools. And all of this seems a bit of a long shot Helen, I think you’ve been banking on the impossible. I don’t know if it’s the thought of working for a living that so depresses you and makes you look for ways to avoid it. You’ve just got to get on with life – it’s no picnic. I mean I myself play the lottery, but I don’t get up in the morning believing I’m going to win it.’

‘Nor do I’ said Helen flabbergasted. She was really angered by her father’s words. ‘I don’t look to avoid working or to shirk the real world either. But if you had a talent you would look to practice it. And I do have a talent. And I’ve written a book that should make me money. I would never bank on winning the lottery either; but if I’m holding the winning ticket in my hand, I expect to be able to trade it in for some cash.’

But her father was not given to understanding this and was fixed in his views. ‘No’ he said ‘you’ve got to stop moping. Your mother and I have let you live here gratis for a while, and we haven’t made a fuss. But you’ve got to face up to life my little girl. And in any case don’t writers need experience? Don’t you need to get some life experience in order to write?’

She was sick of her father. Why did he treat her like a little girl? She was thirty-one for Heaven’s sake. And what was this about her trying to avoid the real world? She’d worked the last few years as a teacher. She’d lived away from home for much of her life. So okay, she’d had a variety of jobs, most of them only part time, and she’d scraped by in lots of ways and had often struggled for money. Nevertheless she had worked for a living. She’d been a waitress, she’d worked in a bar, as a carer in an old people’s home – all temporary jobs it’s true, but still it was work. And true, she’d been a student for a total of six years and had had two gap years as well; but all the same she’d worked, she wasn’t inexperienced. And yet as soon as she’d returned home, and stepped across the threshold, it was as if her whole adult life had been forgotten about, and she’d returned to being a teenager. Her parents, her father in particular, thought her only a child still. And he was ignorant and condescending to her. Though he was a good man, a strong man, an experienced man who worked hard, he had somewhat preconceived notions about his daughter, and thought her naïve and inexperienced.

So did life go on. But Helen had one final hope. A major publishing house had recently launched a new fiction imprint, designed solely to source new writing talent. You didn’t need an agent to submit a work, and with quiet hope, Helen had. And what was more promising, was that she’d read extracts from some of the books that had been so far selected in this way; and by and large they weren’t up to much. In fact they were quite amateurish. ‘Surely they will see my talent’ she said to herself with quiet and real hope. And then the reply came.


Dear Miss Simpson,

Thank you for submitting your work to us. It has now been given full consideration, and I’m sorry to say that we will not be taking it on. This is not a judgement on the work itself, but rather it may be that we have similar works in the pipeline, or that we do not feel personally capable of promoting your work.


With good wishes for your future prospects and best of luck,
Yours Sincerely
Bla bla bla.


Again she was completely flummoxed. This was the final, final straw. If these people – these fools – wouldn’t publish it, then no-one would. She was completely pole-axed. Overcome with immense anger and bitterness she was beside herself trying to stay calm. That was it then. It was all over. At the end of her tether she now decided to write a reply to the email she’d just received. Of all the rejections this was the one that most riled her. In some instances she’d got nothing back at all – from big time agents mainly. In other instances she’d received token dismissals. But because this last one had come from the new fiction imprint – people who were genuinely looking to help new writers – genuine, well-intentioned people, almost philanthropists – and because they’d written a fairly pleasant and not unconciliatory letter, and because she’d banked all her hopes on them, she took her wrath out on them. She felt intimidated by the larger, professional agencies and with others she felt as though she would have been speaking to a brick wall. But this new fiction imprint had its own website; and one of its chief editors, regularly blogged and interacted with people, and seemed like a reasonable man. So it was on them that she chose to vent her anger.

She was consumed in writing the reply. Her palms were sweaty, her heart pounded, adrenaline rushed through her body. At last it was ready.


Dear piece of brain-dead shit,
thank you so much for rejecting my work. I’m very surprised that a publisher such as you – with your amateurish and incredibly feeble publications – has the lack of intelligence to dismiss my work….


and so on. At the end she signed it:


Your worst enemy,
Helen Simpson.
P.S. Sleep with one eye open you mother fucker! I’ll fucking kill you!

*******************************

When she woke the next day, she felt sobered and ashamed of her message. She knew she was wrong, she knew she had taken her anger out on the wrong people. And if she so despised the fiction works of this new imprint, and indeed of others she’d applied to, why had she hoped to become one of their authors? There was something fundamentally flawed in that and she knew it. She determined to be less worked up and became more comatose. The weeks went by. The days elapsed uneventfully, she did nothing, simply watching TV uninterested or she went on the internet.

And for this last she mainly spent her time reading blogs and websites of a literary nature. Some blogs were of aspiring authors, others of newly published writers, others of established writers, editors and publishers, commentators on books and the publishing industry.

Though it seemed like a rather dead world, she became somewhat addicted to reading all this stuff, to hear of the experiences of writers and wannabes, of people connected to the literary scene, of all the gossip, petit bickering and back-biting; of all the injustices.

She read all these blogs avidly, read the thoughts and opinions of literary wannabes and the like, learnt of people’s disappointment and their sickness with and hatred of the publishing industry; of how difficult it was to break through; real tales of bitterness and resentment. And also she came across reviews of new books, of editors and publishers hyping-up up and coming authors, and raving about their books. And no matter what she read it always seemed relevant to her situation and to her book. Either someone was talking about the misery of rejection or the stupidity of agents and publishers; or else someone was bigging up a book that seemed so similar to hers, only poorer, and she felt bitterly annoyed at such times. And worse were articles like these appearing in the papers:


Where are the modern day Dickens or Orwells? The lack of talent in modern fiction.


Yesterday I picked out six books from my local bookshop, all by new authors. Of these six, I was unable to get past page twenty on five of them, whilst the sixth, although I read it to the end, lacked real punch and verve. There are so many hard luck stories about these days of authors unable to make it into print, and of wannabe writers whinging about the problems they have, but the fact that publishers are having to take on these sort of limp-paced novels proves that there is a profound shortage of genuinely talented writers out there. It seems to me that wannabe writers had best stop whinging and either accept that they’re just not up to the grade or concentrate on improving their game….


And whenever she read any of the literary blogs, she would often leave comments. And these were often long-winded and went off the boil, sounded paranoid, and had little in fact to relate them to the article she was commenting on; rather they were purely about her own situation. She was so absorbed in herself, in the injustices done against her, in the fact that her book hadn’t made it. One of these went like this:


‘Don’t tell me about the stupidity of agents! I’ve written a book which is as good as anything out there and yet some simple minded Oxbridge dumb-head shit for brains has got the cheek to tell me that my characters are too narcissistic and that I lack experience’ (she had received one such rejection recently). ‘Well excuse me, but am I not allowed to portray real characters who might just happen to be a bit nasty? I mean come on, what a fake society we live in. Last night’ she wrote, going completely off the point ‘I was listening to some pop star on the radio and guess what, he was bullied at school. What fudge! I bet he was! Why can’t anybody come out and say ‘alright, hands up, I was a bully at school.’ What false people there are around. And not just the fakers who claim they were bullied, it’s the listeners as well. They’ll be saying to themselves ‘oh he was bullied – he’s a good person then’ instead of saying what a false, narcissistic, self-absorbed moron he is. And if he’d come out and said ‘I was a bully at school’ they wouldn’t have said ‘oh well at least that’s honest’ they would have said ‘oh he’s so narcissistic!’ huh!’


And so did she rant. She was completely at a loss now as how to proceed with her life; shut out, cast off and alone, and when she was like this, and felt there was no hope, she just raved and ranted and all to her detriment. All of these comments of hers, were to some extent cries for help. But no one ever got back to her about them; rather they avoided her like the plague.

A few weeks went by. Then one day she came across a new posting on a blog she often read, that of a girl of similar age, struggling to get published. Though Helen had read an extract from her book and thought it not as good as hers, she did in general like reading the thoughts of this girl, finding herself in a similar situation as she did. Yet today’s entry came as a blow to her.

The girl had been offered a £50,000 advance for her book! Huh! How could that be? It was rubbish. It was complete and total trash. And Helen couldn’t control her anger. She hastily added this comment.

‘I’m sorry to see the literary world has finally gone completely mad. Fifty thousand for a load of shit like that. Well I’ll challenge anyone to say that your book’s better than mine. You can read it here’ and she added in a link to her website.

She was full of nervous energy. She was in a right tizzy, knew that she was acting foolishly but she was also excited and thought this a good opportunity for people to at least read her book. And truly that in itself would be a small comfort, for as yet no one had done so. However she couldn’t see what a fool she was making of herself. In the same sentence she had gone from slagging off someone else’s work, their baby, with unremitting hardship; to leaving her own work on offer so that others, she hoped, would praise it. It was such a cry for help. Just like the terrorist who through his acts of destruction hopes to make peace with the world, and somehow – rather derangedly – expects to be loved by the world after their deed, so she acted now. She had criticised another’s book brutally; then given a link to her own. And she awaited a response to this sensitively, as if she expected people to be nice to her. The irony was completely lost on her.

She slept badly and was up next morning keen to see if anyone had responded to her comment, her challenge.

And unfortunately they had:

‘Why are you having a go at Jessica? It’s hardly her fault. If you carry on like that, like a raving lunatic, do you really believe anyone would want to read or much less publish your book?’

And: ‘Ha! You deluded fool. I’ve read the first page of your ‘book’ but it just didn’t hold my interest. I’m not surprised someone so deluded as to think that that is good literature should also rant and rave when a good author, who has written a good book gets published.’

And: ‘You should learn how to control your bitterness. You talentless, wannabe, literary loser. You need to go to jealousy management classes!’

Helen was devastated, distraught and angered by these comments. And her first thought was to write nasty comments in return to her detractors, those literary wannabes and slag them off and curse them for being stupid, mindless nobodies. But from somewhere she gathered the strength to resist, and giving herself up to a feeling of final sadness and hopelessness, with some dignity, logged off her computer.

Half an hour later she was setting off into the countryside for a walk. It was a beautiful day, there was a pure pastel blue sky, with few clouds in it, and it was just so, so refreshing to be out here in nature, away from everything, absolutely everything that was so impure and hateful in this world. The fresh, invigorating air; the song of birds; the flowing river by the side of which she walked – it was sheer Heaven.

After a few hours of this, she collected her thoughts: ‘how dead, tepid and fake is the entire literary world. What a load of rotting gunk it all amounts to. All that backbiting, bitchery, snobbery and criticism, all that vanity, hollowness and utter rubbish. What useless, lifeless morons it’s made up of. From the pulseless book reviewer who’s got nothing better to do with his time than read endless books and then complain, whinge and blabber on about what a load of rubbish they are; to publicists and editors banging on about how they’ve discovered a new genius, paying them a whopping advance, before the whole thing flops in a year’s time; to young egotistical nobodies, writing self absorbed rubbish and being praised to the skies for it; to agents demanding only works that are fresh, original and exciting and then taking on the worst sort of old hat dross; to books which are so difficult to read and so utterly boring that people mistake them for profound, subtle and intelligent and shower them with literary awards; to established authors getting well paid in order to dissect themselves from life and reality, to sever their connection to what is real and write cheap and meaningless trash that only confirms people’s prejudices; to wannabe authors, complaining about how hard it is to get published, writing grade A garbage and having never themselves read any of the great works of literature; to commentators grumbling about every slight injustice, about how so and so got a publishing contract by being bum-chums with obscure people nobody’s ever heard of, commentators whinging to the nth degree about pointless people, and gossiping about hand bag fights between complete non-entities; to the total and utter nobodies, useless fools who haven’t, and never will write a book, but nevertheless for some reason still refer to themselves as writers, hanging around the whole literary scene like flies around a shit, and criticising and backbiting amongst themselves and starting internet slanging matches with those trying to get published.

‘What a total dead end world. It’s lifeless, dull and awful. And the worst of it is, is that I’m now completely caught up in it and totally obsessed by it. Ugh! To think how I nearly got caught up in an internet slanging match with total nobodies, brain dead literary hangers on, who’ve got nothing better to do with their lives than criticise other people. Ugh! No, it’s exactly like the world of politics. Anyone with a life should best stay clear of it.’

And some few hours later she arrived at a park. There was a duck lake and she sat down on a bench next to it, and just watched the water, contemplating. A woman with a dog went by. She was dressed shabbily, shouted testily at the dog to do as she would have him do; and she had coarse and angry features. And as she walked around the lake she angrily picked up all the bits of rubbish that people had been too improvident to bin, and put these in a plastic bag. She gave Helen a bitter scowl and marching on by, one had the impression of someone not in a good humour with the world. In fact she looked like a bit of a vagabond, as though she was a reject from society. Evidently she was on the dole.

‘No, it’s a dead end world that’s for sure, and I’m caught up right in the middle of it. I’m so desperate to be above it, and yet I’ve descended to the level of petit whinger right on the fringes of it. You know there’s a phrase ‘keeping it real’ which rappers and pop stars use when they’ve made it and they know their lives are now dead and buried and that they’re disconnected from what they were and from what made them. And how apt that is now. How I’d love to keep it real, and yet I’ve been sucked into this zombie world. And what any writer, any true writer should believe is that life is what is important. They should have a passion for life first and foremost.’

And she remembered how D.H. Lawrence had headed off to New Mexico in order to escape the horrors of the western world; and how Chekhov, fed up with the festering corpse of the literary world had set out for an adventure to Sakhalin, to do something of worth with his life.

‘And you know a year ago, I was alive. I was teaching Biology – that beautiful and purifying subject – to children who liked me and said I was a good teacher. And I had the rush of reports, exams and open evenings. And teenage boys had crushes on me and I flirted with the staff at dinnertime. And I was alive!’

It seemed now like a very distant memory.

‘And I never ever wanted to be a writer, I simply wanted to live life. And I did live life.’

And she thought back to how she used to go swimming every Wednesday morning when she’d been at the university. The purity of it all, of crashing through the water gasping for breath, the cold, cold water, the chlorine, the hot shower afterwards and then the coffee and donuts. Oh it was so good. She’d been alive. Or that skiing holiday she’d had with friends. The exhilaration of flying down the mountainside, the joy of exercising in the sun-lit snow, a pot-noodle at lunchtime and then back out on the piste for more! What fun! What youth!

And she thought back to how she’d gone night-clubbing till six in the morning, trooping back home as the day was dawning, excited and alive; or how she’d volunteered a year of her time to help in a special school and how she – the narcissistic and inexperienced person! – had helped wipe the backsides of children with cerebel palsy, even though as a volunteer she wasn’t expected to do so. And when she thought of all these things, she realised how alive she had once been. She hadn’t known or cared about the literary world then – and she’d been so better off without it.

‘No, life is the thing. That woman who came by collecting rubbish, she is on the fringes of society, she is discarded and out of humour with the world. But she at least is alive. She at least has been rejected by the living world. Her problems are with humanity. And as bad as that may be it is sort of profound all the same. But I have been rejected by the literary world. My problems are with rotting vegetables.

‘No, I used to be alive and I must get back to life, and rise above this pettiness.’

And she dreamed of living again. And why not indeed? She was only thirty-one, all those people in the literary world were old fogies. Surely? They were whinging old bores. She was young for Heaven’s sake – she had her whole life ahead of her. It had been ages since she’d been out clubbing. And she imagined being an exotic dancer, and just strutting her stuff in a night club without a care in the world, stripping for a tip, and being alive and sticking two fingers up at the dead-letter literary world. To be alive. Or she’d become a prostitute, they at least were real. She’d live the life, entertaining clients for dirty wads of cash, doing dirty deeds with sleazy old men and snorting coke in her spare time: at least then she would be alive.

‘Or perhaps I’ll go to Paris, learn to speak French, drink wine in the evening sunshine and get away from all these dead people. And if France has got its own rotting vegetable literary world, well, I won’t be able to comprehend what they’re all whining about.’

And she imagined sitting at a café and being served by a waiter. He was very handsome and deferential, swarthy and sophisticated, wearing a tight top that showed off his muscles. And after he’d served her and she’d finished her meal, he would approach respectfully, and ask if he could join her for a glass of wine. And he was so charming, and it was just so pleasant to sit in the sunshine and drink red wine with Giovanni – perhaps he was Italian – and he’d never read a book in his life, didn’t care for such things, he only cared for life and for living. And he would drive her around on his scooter, and with Giovanni at her side, that cool, living, hunk of a man, she need not worry about the literary world, she could just dismiss it as a non-entity, she could play her trump card against it, her Giovanni, and win hands down.

Two weeks passed. She resolved to rise above her situation and get back to life. She spent her days listening to the radio and sewing a tapestry. And then one day it was finished. That evening she went out for a jog in the park, a run in the warm summer sunshine. And she finally felt herself alive once more, brought back to life. It was such a calm, pleasant evening and such a soul-soothing, relaxing run. And when she got home she felt sedate and at peace and quietly satisfied.

But that night she couldn’t help going onto the internet and catching up, reading all the rubbish she’d missed out on over the past two weeks. She just couldn’t help it. Though she didn’t leave any comments, she was annoyed with herself for this activity.

‘Where on earth has my youth gone? I am young, it’s a fact of life. I should be out partying and having fun. But here I am getting myself pointlessly worked up over the thoughts and opinions of rotting vegetables. The entire literary world is a dead lump of wood, and I despise all the people in it, but the worst thing is, is that I myself have now been dragged permanently into it and just can’t escape. I can despise all those people as much as I like, but at the end of the day, I’m just as bad as they are, just as dead and unliving. Like a bullock with a chain on it’s leg, I’m forever tethered, a slave to this foolish world. And it’s a black hole. For once it’s sucked you in, there’s no escaping it. It’ll simply crush you to death.’