I wish I had been braver. I really do. I wish I had seriously started practising my craft in my twenties.....I also wish I had set up a pension then but never mind!. I always wanted to write - well ever since a school production of Alice In Wonderland made me think that acting wasn't for me.
When I left school I thought it best to get a job, at least until the world had discovered my genius. I thought it would e simple enough to go home to my digs in Joppa, Edinburgh after work and beaver away at my Magnum Opus and then in six months at the outside it would be snapped up by a publisher - hopefully someone classy like Faber and Faber or Jonathon Cape.
Erm, no! For a start I couldn't start. I had plenty of false starts but no cornerstone on which I could build something worthwhile. For the first but not the last time my writing was put on the back burner. I suppose that I was scared of finding out that I couldn't write at all. I didn't know what that would do to me and I was in no hurry to find out.
I tried to make the most of my job in an Edinburgh Bookshop until I got fired a couple of months later. This was the first firing but by no means the last. Then I got a job writing!!!!!!!!!!!!! - verses for Greeting Cards. That was well paid and would have been fine if I had fulfilled my quota of verses instead of trying to write my masterpiece on company time. I really missed their excellent subsidised canteen. They were very polite but very insistent. It was time to go.
I went back to Edinburgh and started what I like to think was my Bohemian Period but was just a succession but was just a succession of makeshift jobs while I tried to locate my Writing Mojo. I think at that time I was playing Hide and Seek!
The makeshift jobs got worse - and more makeshift!: Brush Salesman, fried chicken operative (have you ever tried cutting a frozen chicken on a bandsaw? No? Don't!)
I was also a Sandwich Board Man. I was making my own way in the world last................admittedly it was usually along Princes St up Hanover Street and on to George Street. It was Spring and I was getting plenty of fresh air but unfortunately the book and my writing was getting further and further away.
To Be Continued.
When I left school I thought it best to get a job, at least until the world had discovered my genius. I thought it would e simple enough to go home to my digs in Joppa, Edinburgh after work and beaver away at my Magnum Opus and then in six months at the outside it would be snapped up by a publisher - hopefully someone classy like Faber and Faber or Jonathon Cape.
Erm, no! For a start I couldn't start. I had plenty of false starts but no cornerstone on which I could build something worthwhile. For the first but not the last time my writing was put on the back burner. I suppose that I was scared of finding out that I couldn't write at all. I didn't know what that would do to me and I was in no hurry to find out.
I tried to make the most of my job in an Edinburgh Bookshop until I got fired a couple of months later. This was the first firing but by no means the last. Then I got a job writing!!!!!!!!!!!!! - verses for Greeting Cards. That was well paid and would have been fine if I had fulfilled my quota of verses instead of trying to write my masterpiece on company time. I really missed their excellent subsidised canteen. They were very polite but very insistent. It was time to go.
I went back to Edinburgh and started what I like to think was my Bohemian Period but was just a succession but was just a succession of makeshift jobs while I tried to locate my Writing Mojo. I think at that time I was playing Hide and Seek!
The makeshift jobs got worse - and more makeshift!: Brush Salesman, fried chicken operative (have you ever tried cutting a frozen chicken on a bandsaw? No? Don't!)
I was also a Sandwich Board Man. I was making my own way in the world last................admittedly it was usually along Princes St up Hanover Street and on to George Street. It was Spring and I was getting plenty of fresh air but unfortunately the book and my writing was getting further and further away.
To Be Continued.
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