Writing a novel (1952)
There are three reasons for becoming a writer. The first is that you need the money; the second, that you have something to say that you think the world should know; and the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evening. . . I had only the financial one and that may have been part of the cause of my failure. The publisher didn't like the book.
I tried to write without the literary convention of love and, in the words of one publisher's reader, to succeed in doing this would require genius or at least style. . . Every incident depicted had taken place in or on the fringe of my own existence; every line of dialogue had been spoken in my hearing. As there were no sympathetic characters in real life, there were none in my book. . . The simplest comment on my book came from the ballet teacher. She said, 'I wish you hadn't made every line funny. It's so depressing.'
Of course the most obvious explanation for my total lack of success was that I was a bad writer. This idea I did not entertain for a moment.
I continued for months to nag all my friends who had any connection, however slender, with the book racket, into promoting the sale of the book. Finally, when even Fred Urquhart, darting about London with my manuscript under his arm, could not produce favourable results, I began to lose interest. . . (The book was eventually published in 1977) Then the failure of the whole venture became overshadowed by a far greater mistake that at first I did not even know I had made.
I tried to write without the literary convention of love and, in the words of one publisher's reader, to succeed in doing this would require genius or at least style. . . Every incident depicted had taken place in or on the fringe of my own existence; every line of dialogue had been spoken in my hearing. As there were no sympathetic characters in real life, there were none in my book. . . The simplest comment on my book came from the ballet teacher. She said, 'I wish you hadn't made every line funny. It's so depressing.'
Of course the most obvious explanation for my total lack of success was that I was a bad writer. This idea I did not entertain for a moment.
I continued for months to nag all my friends who had any connection, however slender, with the book racket, into promoting the sale of the book. Finally, when even Fred Urquhart, darting about London with my manuscript under his arm, could not produce favourable results, I began to lose interest. . . (The book was eventually published in 1977) Then the failure of the whole venture became overshadowed by a far greater mistake that at first I did not even know I had made.