My Fifty Fifth Week as a Budding Author
Spike Milligan has to be one of the greatest authors of all time. I am blissfully aware that that statement would probably be deemed heresy were it uttered in within earshot of any academic concerned with English Literature. But it’s true. Reading anything written by Spike should always be done either on the toilet or near one, as he littered his text with hand grenades of wit clearly designed to force the reader to piss themselves on the spot.
Take this little snippet from Puckoon.
“Suddenly, nothing happened. It happened suddenly mind you”
Absolute literary genius that eclipses any “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players” in my book. I’ve read just about everything Spike Milligan has ever written, listened to all of the Goon Show recordings and still remember scenes from the TV show “There’s a lot of it about”. Spike was an amazing musician, a comedy genius and a highly prolific author but reading his biography exposes a darker side of his character, he was plagued by depression.
In his worst periods Spike would spend weeks on end in bed simply staring at the ceiling and refusing all contact with others. Out of the blue a thought would trigger him out of his mire and he’d return to productivity as if nothing had happened at all. Reading these words I began to see Spike as a human curve as illustrated in the diagram below:-
Spike appeared to oscillate regularly over time through a familiar pattern and in understanding this I began to clearly empathise with Spike. We both share similar characteristics. I hasten to add that it is not “genius”, “amazing” or “prolific” in my case, it’s the oscillation. Some weeks I’m flying high at the top of the curve and extremely productive, others just seem to be seven days that passed while I appeared to be alive.
The last few weeks have been some of the later. I’m sure I’ve been working on something? as the playstation has a coating of dust and the garden is in a right state. But I can’t for the life of me work out what? Book progress has been glacial, an arabic shoplifter would have typed out more words than I have over the past three weeks. So I sat myself down and asked, why?
A few minutes of staring at the floor and shuffling shoes ensued. Then I owned up to have been “fucking about doing other things that aren’t really the book”. The inquest gathered pace and we began to catalogue just what it was I’d been up to.
Firstly, there’s an extended piece of IT consultancy I have done for a client interfacing with Government IT systems. It should have been a “piece of IT consultancy” but I chose to ignore the word Government before I took it on. How foolish. What was supposed to be a few days worth of javascript hackery turned into ten days of hair tearing frustration with civil service first line support technicians. I’d ask a simple question, they’d seek clarification from IT support who would respond with “tell him to switch it off and on again”. This works in many cases I’m sure, but is slightly lacking when asking for further detail concerning XML interface specifications.
I formed a special bond with my IT caseworker “Simon”. He tried his hardest to track down answers. I suggested to him that some examples would make things a lot easier and received this:-
“We did think about creating official examples some time ago, but the cost to us as a public body was deemed to be prohibitive in the current climate.”
Well done the Government. “We would like to encourage you to use our electronic services as it would save us money. But helping you to use our electronic services would be too costly in the current climate, so we’ll write some crap documentation and you can guess instead”.
We gave me a right bollocking over this one invoking the “Thirteen years in Royal Mail..you should have known better clause”. All IT consultancy is banned until the book is finished.
Next there’s the business opportunities. Leaving a structured work environment goes a long way to freeing the mind. Ideas that were previously constrained by budgets, defined strategy, skillsets or common sense are now free to come to the fore. Additionally, many ex-colleagues believe I’ve finished the book and are getting in touch with equally mad paths to future wealth.
I confess I’ve been caught up in a few of them. Some are just discussions, others a bit of code hackery and one almost has a business plan. I’ve got to knock most of them on the head though We have an attic full of my unfinished Airfix models, testament to an ability to start with enthusiasm but never complete.
Bollocking number two. “Dave, focus on the book, fanny about with business ideas in your spare time or when it’s finished, and by the way, someone has already invented a mobile phone linked doorbell” (well they patented it, I thought of it in 2003).
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Finally we come to me. I don’t mind admitting that I have a little bit of the Spike in my makeup. Sometimes I’m bouncing around like an Italian cruise ship passenger. Other times I’m a little more introspective, wondering whether it’s going to work, whether I’m up to it or whether anyone gives a shit either way. Self doubt can be a huge driver, it can also eat away at a project until nothing remains.
We had a chat about this as well. We’ve decided that the weapon of choice is obstinacy. The few friends that I have will argue that there’s no shortage of that, it just needs application and focus, so that’s what we’ll do.
There are numerous other distractions that have also raised their head in the past few weeks. The car failed MOT and a huge argument with the garage ensued as to cause and more importantly cost of the remedy. We built a shed, yes, another one, ready for the next army of bikes that will make its way to my front door. I’ve done some more research into the Year Record and met a whole new bunch of fabulous people with amazing stories to tell. We’ve de-cluttered and downsized our life a bit. Ebay is flooded with the contents of our attic and I’ve now got a large collection of “We’re sorry you are leaving us” letters. This is partly due to looking at the bills we paid in 2011 and wondering how on earth we paid them with me out of work. The truth is we didn’t. My savings account made up the rest and it’s worked out that we can do without cable TV, heating insurance, contact lenses that are never used and subscriptions to magazines full of adverts for stuff that costs money.
So suitably chastised I’ve returned to the original plan. I’ve also returned to this blog. The benefits (to me) clearly outweigh the cost as it provides a weekly tape measure of the distance travelled and the distance yet to go. Also, writing it allows me to vent a little steam and somewhat relieve the pressure. This week may have seemed a little morose but stay with me, as next week Helen and I do something incredibly stupid in the current financial climate. Trust me, we’re only doing it for your entertainment.
Nine weeks left to complete the project. We started with Spike so let’s stay with him at the end and finish on a rather apt poem that tickled my spotty youth.
“The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled -
The twit!”
Dave
17th January 2012
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