Oh yes, I think it was me.
It was long before the financial implications of choosing a life in The Yarts had hit home to two generations of my family: my muso son and me. But we wouldn’t have it any other way. The writing/music life fixes you in its gaze and you are powerless to look away. So here we are in lockdown together.
I flagged a change in direction with less emphasis on separation and divorce, and more on the living-happily-ever-after. Or its real life equivalent. Whatever that is.
In my mid-40s, I simultaneously lost the passion for my cooking career and gained a love of writing. I decided to use the skills accumulated throughout the previous quarter century to work for me in my new writing career: the ability to match menu to client, the organisational skills to run a small business and a willingness to learn.
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The reader gets a sense that the writer has been there, done that. When shared experience is written from the heart we relate to it and, with luck, derive comfort from it.
It’s human to have a secret, but it’s just as human to reveal it sooner or later.
― Philip Roth
And maybe it is. But not all writers are secret-sharers. I know writers who are keen observers of humankind but prefer to remain unobserved themselves. I admire them but can’t emulate them. Such people do well not to let me into their secrets. For while I’m a great sharer of my own, I’m a reluctant holder of others’.
There are, however, exceptions to most rules. Like this piece of wisdom written over a mirror in a Beverly Hills women’s restroom:
You’re too good for him.
It may or may not be true, but it makes me laugh.
I’ve already likened my passion for writing to the urge to reproduce. I could say the same of my relentless pursuit of a publishing deal. I am guilty of every crime in the self-promotion book. Schmoozing. Pitching at a minute’s notice. Imposing on the goodwill of strangers. It’s a litany of misdemeanours.