Home Thoughts from Abroad by Jan Needle

Thoughts from a visit north of the border. The house party consisted of Cally Phillips, George, Hector, Dude, Jan and Viv. Call it an authorial thinktank, or brainstormer. There were three guitars and a tin whistle in the croft (!), and we didn’t play a note.

One of the subjects me and Cally talked about a lot was the continuing problem of self-division. So keen was I to meet and pick the brains of a genuinely computer literate writer that I paid half a million quid for a single rail fair from Manchester to somewhere north of Aberdeen. I won’t tell you where exactly, because Hector and Dude would die of excitement if they had any more visitors to run around and slobber over, and I won’t mention that the cost was well offset (as my kids might say) by the gift of a magnificent Subaru to drive back to civilization in.

Cally and George, near the Spotty Bag shop.  Cold

Two points before I continue. One, I’ve never agreed with the bizarre rule that you must never use a preposition to end a sentence with, and Two, I’m lying about the price of the rail fare. Booked in advance, it was twenty five pounds. And the Subaru, much to my astonishment, did about thirty to the gallon. The whole thing would have been ridiculously cheap and successful if I hadn’t then tried to insure the vehicle for a year when I got home. Confused.com (the lady with the funny hair and a cornucopia under her skirt) wanted just under two grand! I’ve since been told by my daughter and other young things that Confused.com is far and away the dearest on the market, but I still haven’t dared ask any other company. Bloody television advertising.

And so to self-division. Ms Phillips, as regular readers of AE well know, is a powerhouse of energy and commitment. Her emails to me are often timed long before sparrowfart (that’s not rude; it’s Australian for unpleasantly early in the morning) and emails constitute about minus nought per cent of her daily literary output. Her house is scattered with the corpses of worn out computers, and George has to sustain himself with a large and wondrous collection of single malts. But the first thing we agreed is that the era of new media authorship is the era of fragmentation. Which boils down to this:

Jan: Cally, tell me how one writes books, and gets the fact of their existence known to more than seven people.

CALLY: How many hours are there in your working day? Do you get up before or after dawn? Do you go to bed before or after the bats have hung up their batboots for the night?

Jan: Cally, I grow old. I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. I must stop work after the Archers, obviously. The emotional strain of trying not to strangle Pip (at least metaphorically) becomes too great.

Ms Phillips laughs. A merry laugh, but tinged with sadness. Or even existential despair.

CALLY: You men are so self-indulgent. You have to school yourself. Do you have two madly energetic dogs? Do you do all the cooking, housework, snow clearing, cat sitting for the neighbours? You must divide your time up. First the important things, then the less, then the least. Pull yourself together, Needle.

Jan: But writing takes it out of me! By the time I’ve done a thousand words I want me mum! Sorry, I mean me bed. I’m sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sometimes I just can’t go on…

So Cally showed me how to set up new blogs, and talked through how to get people to read them, and explained this, and explained that, and cooked the tea, and for all I know knocked off a thousand words as well. Oh, and took us up to Banff, and introduced us to the Spotty Bag shop (the best shop in the world), and walked us through the woods. She even set up the new blog for me, and we made a list of things I’d do on it as soon as I got back to England and had a sleep. And I was inspired.

But we did agree the whole thing was bordering on the ridiculous. When I had young children, and overworked myself as a writer and had a proper (!) job as well,  my kids started calling me Uncle Daddy. And in those days my publishers did (or said they did) all the promotion and stuff like that. And now it’s down to me.

Cheshire. On the canal boat five days later. Warm

And our biggest area of agreement is that one can do too much of the self-promotion thing. And one needs a way of assessing whether it is worth it. I honestly spend far more time trying to be noticed than I do writing books. Sometimes I spend more than an hour a day on Facebook. More than an hour, for God’s sake!

What for? Who am I kidding? How many ebooks does it sell me?

The upshot of that delightful two days in Scotland, with those delightful people and their deliciously bonkers dogs, was this – we need to write more books. Not blogs, but books. If you write more books, more people might read them. If you write about the books you’ve already written, if you write about them till you’re blue in the face – the people who like them will say ‘Come on, then? Where’s the next one? We haven’t got all day, you know.’

So here I am now, three weeks after Scotland, sitting at my table – a better person. Since I got back I have processed half a new book to go electronic, although I’ve not had time to start an original yet. And I’ve failed to polish up the details of the proposed new blog like I promised Cally that I would.

She’ll understand. Because she knows I think it is a good idea. But we’re also both sure of this (pretty sure): Don’t tear yourself to pieces getting noticed. Get the real work done.

It was good to meet you, Cally Phillips. And your gang. It was an inspiration. 

Lancashire. Bloody freezing...

BIG PS. It turns out that another bigger brain than mine, Sue Price, is even now working on the publicity problem, and has also got some egregiously good ideas. We'll all be rich, I tells ya! Where would I be without generous women?

PPS I'm part of a small bookfest at  the Albert Club in Manchester  on Sunday June 2. It's a great place - tennis, bowls, snooker, culture. And me! Everybody welcome. http://www.thealbertclub.co.uk/