My Reason To Write

If your only reason for writing a book is to make money, think again.

We all have that age old picture of the Dickens era writer with black ink stained fingers, scratching away at his parchment by candlelight, and to be honest, when you look at the industry today with all its high class technology, you could be fooled into thinking that writers have it easy and are sat on a good size pile of constantly flowing cash. But the harsh reality is, for the writer things have not improved a great deal from back in the days of Dickens.

Writing will not make you rich overnight, well not for 90% of those who choose to do it. Yes there are those chosen few who the chips fell right for, and they have the privilege of living a life of comfort and security. For the rest of us that is a dream we can only dream of, as getting a book written edited and then out for sale is a mammoth task, and that is just the first hurdle, then you have to make it sell. Most of the big publishers are not that interested in new writers, there is little money to be made as the investment in promotion is very high, and the returns may not recoup their initial investment, they prefer the tried and tested route of known name celebrities and writers, as their first consideration has to be profit driven. Self publishing does give you a much longer term programme, and personally considering the fact that with a traditional publisher you have pretty much the first four months of release to make a profit in order to stay on their books, then self publishing does make more sense, as you have time to sit back and wait, especially if you are constantly writing new material. This is how a lot of writers are starting to think now, looking at the bigger longer picture, but even so, the rewards in the form of financial gain will never be high.

It’s a very real fact that your average writer earns less in a year from writing than most people do in a month of working at their usual job, you may see the handsomely priced books at £5, £10 and £15, but believe me, when it comes to the royalty of that price being paid out to the writer, it has dropped to less than 10% of the book price per sale.

So why do it?

The fact is that most writers are book geeks, they love literature and reading, and are driven from within by a compulsion to sit for days and weeks slaving away slowly crafting the limits of their imagination into words, that hopefully one day they will share with the rest of us. It’s not very glamorous, and at times it can be quiet boring, and yet the need to write drives all writers forward.

Looking at my own life, I sit alone separated from my family, happily tapping the keyboard lost in a world of my own invention, I lose all sense of reality and time as I watch the words appear on the screen, and I feel the rush of whatever related emotion is present within at the one lost moment in time. Where it all comes from I cannot say, I have a plan in my mind of what I want to say, and how I want the story to develop, but I can assure you the finished result is far superior to what I had first imagined.  Woven into my thoughts and my words via this wonderful process of merger between my conscious self and the depths of my soul something wondrous and beautiful is created, as every thought I have ever had and every experience, be it happy or from the depths of my despair fuses into the words of the person you think to be the creator of the story. It may sound odd, but the conscious part of me cannot happily take all the credit, because writing unleashes huge deeper parts of me, and that is something that I find mind-blowing, as it reveals parts of my own self that even I was not aware of when I began. I suppose that is my reason to write, that part of me is cooler, wilder and far more adventurous than ordinary everyday me.  Put plainly I would say, its more addictive than any drug or substance you could offer me, and leaves me thoroughly exhausted with just the single thought of deep happy sleep to occupy my mind as I drift off slowly.

Reading what I have written back is like reading a code known only to me, as I gasp at what has been revealed. To any other reader it is simply a story, a tale to captivate the mind and intrigue the soul, but for myself alone at my desk, I see my life, my feelings, my hopes and dreams, it’s so deeply personal that it almost feels like standing naked before the world, my only security is that I know no one will ever truly work it all out.

There is no part of the process where I have thoughts of money and gains, I feel no need to embrace vanity and be adored, if anything I am possibly one of the most reluctant writers to publish. Publishing is a drag; I find it tedious and annoying as it takes me away from writing, as I am forced to promote the book. I am the worst possible person alive to ask about what I write, because when I look at what I have committed to paper, I find it hard to break out of my deeply private sense of privacy and talk at any length about how the story came together. I am in many ways also the biggest critic of what I have written, I am never satisfied with the finished result and always feel it could be better, so promoting it is not an easy task, and I would much rather be sat at my desk lost and alone caught in that moment of wonder where it all spills out onto the page.

Selling a book feels like real work, writing comes to me in an uncontrollable compulsion, and there is nothing in the process that I do not take great joy from, money plays no part in it at all. I cannot think of sales and income, it is too much of a distraction from the process of physically writing.

I am a pretty rational person, and yet I am a full time writer, I know it means things can and will be tough, and as selfish as it sounds I don’t care, I have spent the last 30 years of my life breaking my back working in horticulture from dawn until dust, in every kind of weather, and I was not rich then either. It’s nice to sit at my desk, snug and warm and rest my aching body that has the scars and has paid the price of my labours since youth. Writing has afforded me the time to watch the world and take note, it has given me back a family life, and a chance to walk in the world and enjoy its wonder, it doesn’t pay in sterling, but the rewards have been vast in so much as it has taken a tired workaholic and given me back a life of quality and value.

There is little financial gain to be made from writing, but there is the huge payoff of knowing that I have shared something deeply private and special with those who turn the pages of what I write about. I have the reward of being closer to those who I love and love me, so because of writing I feel I have become the wealthiest man alive, and if by chance I do need money, well hey, there are always part time jobs.