Innocence Page 16
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How I Became a Writer
First published in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (1977)
A fiction writer is a person who invents stories.
But how does one start out on a job like this? How does one become a full-time professional fiction writer?
Charles Dickens found it easy. At the age of twenty-four, he simply sat down and wrote Pickwick Papers, which became an immediate best-seller. But Dickens was a genius, and geniuses are different from the rest of us.
In this century (it was not always so in the last one), just about every single writer who has finally become successful in the world of fiction has started out in some other job – a schoolteacher, perhaps, or a doctor or a journalist or a lawyer. (Alice in Wonderland was written by a mathematician, and The Wind in the Willows by a civil servant.) The first attempts at writing have therefore always had to be done in spare time, usually at night.
The reason for this is obvious. When you are adult, it is necessary to earn a living. To earn a living, you must get a job. You must if possible get a job that guarantees you so much money a week. But however much you may want to take up fiction writing as a career, it would be pointless to go along to a publisher and say, ‘I want a job as a fiction writer.’ If you did that, he would tell you to buzz off and write the book first. And even if you brought a finished book to him and he liked it well enough to publish it, he still wouldn’t give you a job. He would give you an advance of perhaps five hundred pounds, which he would get back again later by deducting it from your royalties. (A royalty, by the way, is the money that a writer gets from the publisher for each copy of his book that is sold. The average royalty a writer gets is ten per cent of the price of the book itself in the book shop. Thus, for a book selling at four pounds, the writer would get forty pence. For a paperback selling at fifty pence, he would get five pence.)
It is very common for a hopeful fiction writer to spend two years of his spare time writing a book which no publisher will publish. For that he gets nothing at all except a sense of frustration.
If he is fortunate enough to have a book accepted by a publisher, the odds are that as a first novel it will in the end sell only about three thousand copies. That will earn him maybe a thousand pounds. Most novels take at least one year to write, and one thousand pounds a year is not enough to live on these days. So you can see why a budding fiction writer invariably has to start out in another job first of all. If he doesn’t, he will almost certainly starve.
Here are some of the qualities you should possess or should try to acquire if you wish to become a fiction writer:
You should have a lively imagination.
You should be able to write well. By that I mean you should be able to make a scene come alive in the reader’s mind. Not everybody has this ability. It is a gift, and you either have it or you don’t.
You must have stamina. In other words, you must be able to stick to what you are doing and never give up, for hour after hour, day after day, week after week and month after month.
You must be a perfectionist. That means you must never be satisfied with what you have written until you have rewritten it again and again, making it as good as you possibly can.
You must have strong self-discipline. You are working alone. No one is employing you. No one is around to give you the sack if you don’t turn up for work, or to tick you off if you start slacking.
It helps a lot if you have a keen sense of humour. This is not essential when writing for grown-ups, but for children, it’s vital.
You must have a degree of humility. The writer who thinks that his work is marvellous is heading for trouble.
Let me tell you how I myself slid in through the back door and found myself in the world of fiction.
At the age of eight, in 1924, I was sent away to boarding-school in a town called Weston-super-Mare, on the south-west coast of England. Those were days of horror, of fierce discipline, of no talking in the dormitories, no running in the corridors, no untidiness of any sort, no this or that or the other, just rules and still more rules that had to be obeyed. And the fear of the dreaded cane hung over us like the fear of death all the time.
‘The headmaster wants to see you in his study.’ Words of doom. They sent shivers over the skin of your stomach. But off you went, aged perhaps nine years old, down the long bleak corridors and through an archway that took you into the headmaster’s private area where only horrible things happened and the smell of pipe tobacco hung in the air like incense. You stood outside the awful black door, not daring even to knock. You took deep breaths. If only your mother were here, you told yourself, she would not let this happen. She wasn’t here. You were alone. You lifted a hand and knocked softly, once.
‘Come in! Ah yes, it’s Dahl. Well, Dahl, it’s been reported to me that you were talking during prep last night.’
‘Please, sir, I broke my nib and I was only asking Jenkins if he had another one to lend me.’
‘I will not tolerate talking in prep. You know that very well.’
Already this giant of a man was crossing to the tall corner cupboard and reaching up to the top of it where he kept his canes.
‘Boys who break rules have to be punished.’
‘Sir … I … I had a bust nib … I …’
‘That is no excuse. I am going to teach you that it does not pay to talk during prep.’
He took a cane down that was about three feet long with a little curved handle at one end. It was thin and white and very whippy. ‘Bend over and touch your toes. Over there by the window.’
‘But, sir …’
‘Don’t argue with me, boy. Do as you’re told.’
I bent over. Then I waited. He always kept you waiting for about ten seconds, and that was when your knees began to shake.
‘Bend lower, boy! Touch your toes!’
I stared at the toecaps of my black shoes and I told myself that any moment now this man was going to bash the cane into me so hard that the whole of my bottom would change colour. The welts were always very long, stretching right across both buttocks, blue-black with brilliant scarlet edges, and when you ran your fingers over them ever so gently afterwards, you could feel the corrugations.
Swish! … Crack!
Then came the pain. It was unbelievable, unbearable, excruciating. It was as though someone had laid a white-hot poker across your backside and pressed hard.
The second stroke would be coming soon and it was as much as you could do to stop putting your hands in the way to ward it off. It was the instinctive reaction. But if you did that, it would break your fingers.
Swish! … Crack!
The second one landed right alongside the first and the white-hot poker was pressing deeper and deeper into the skin.
Swish! … Crack!
The third stroke was where the pain always reached its peak. It could go no farther. There was no way it could get any worse. Any more strokes after that simply prolonged the agony. You tried not to cry out. Sometimes you couldn’t help it. But whether you were able to remain silent or not, it was impossible to stop the tears. They poured down your cheeks in streams and dripped on to the carpet.
The important thing was never to flinch upwards or straighten up when you were hit. If you did that, you got an extra one.
Slowly, deliberately, taking plenty of time, the headmaster delivered three more strokes, making six in all.
‘You may go.’ The voice came from a cavern miles away, and you straightened up slowly, agonizingly, and grabbed hold of your burning buttocks with both hands and held them as tight as you could and hopped out of the room on the very tips of your toes.
That cruel cane ruled our lives. We were caned for talking in the dormitory after lights out, for talking in class, for bad work, for carving our initials on the desk, for climbing over walls, for slovenly appearance, for flicking paper-clips, for forgetting to change into house-shoes in the evenings, for not hanging up our games clothes, an
d above all for giving the slightest offence to any master. (They weren’t called teachers in those days.) In other words, we were caned for doing everything that it was natural for small boys to do.
So we watched our words. And we watched our steps. My goodness, how we watched our steps. We became incredibly alert. Wherever we went, we walked carefully, with ears pricked for danger, like wild animals stepping softly through the woods.
Apart from the masters, there was another man in the school who frightened us considerably. This was Mr Pople. Mr Pople was a paunchy, crimson-faced individual who acted as school-porter, boiler superintendent and general handyman. His power stemmed from the fact that he could (and he most certainly did) report us to the headmaster upon the slightest provocation. Mr Pople’s moment of glory came each morning at seven thirty precisely, when he would stand at the end of the long main corridor and ‘ring the bell’. The bell was huge and made of brass, with a thick wooden handle, and Mr Pople would swing it back and forth at arm’s length in a special way of his own, so that it went clangetty-clang-clang, clangetty-clang-clang, clangetty-clang-clang. At the sound of the bell, all the boys in the school, one hundred and eighty of us, would move smartly to our positions in the corridor. We lined up against the walls on both sides and stood stiffly to attention, awaiting the headmaster’s inspection.
But at least ten minutes would elapse before the headmaster arrived on the scene, and during this time, Mr Pople would conduct a ceremony so extraordinary that to this day I find it hard to believe it ever took place. There were six lavatories in the school, numbered on their doors from one to six. Mr Pople, standing at the end of the long corridor, would have in the palm of his hand six small brass discs, each with a number on it, one to six. There was absolute silence as he allowed his eye to travel down the two lines of stiffly standing boys. Then he would bark out a name, ‘Arkle!’
Arkle would fall out and step briskly down the corridor to where Mr Pople stood. Mr Pople would hand him a brass disc. Arkle would then march away towards the lavatories, and to reach them he would have to walk the entire length of the corridor, past all the stationary boys, and then turn left. As soon as he was out of sight, he was allowed to look at his disc and see which lavatory number he had been given.
‘Highton!’ barked Mr Pople, and now Highton would fall out to receive his disc and march away.
‘Angel!’ …
‘Williamson!’ …
‘Gaunt!’ …
‘Price!’ …
In this manner, six boys selected at Mr Pople’s whim were dispatched to the lavatories to do their duty. Nobody asked them if they might or might not be ready to move their bowels at seven thirty in the morning before breakfast. They were simply ordered to do so. But we considered it a great privilege to be chosen because it meant that during the headmaster’s inspection we would be sitting safely out of reach in blessed privacy.
In due course, the headmaster would emerge from his private quarters and take over from Mr Pople. He walked slowly down one side of the corridor, inspecting each boy with the utmost care, strapping his wristwatch on to his wrist as he went along. The morning inspection was an unnerving experience. Every one of us was terrified of the two sharp brown eyes under their bushy eyebrows as they travelled slowly up and down the length of one’s body.
‘Go away and brush your hair properly. And don’t let it happen again or you’ll be sorry.’
‘Let me see your hands. You have ink on them. Why didn’t you wash it off last night?’
‘Your tie is crooked, boy. Fall out and tie it again. And do it properly this time.’
‘I can see mud on that shoe. Didn’t I have to talk to you about that last week? Come and see me in my study after breakfast.’
And so it went on, the ghastly early-morning inspection. And by the end of it all, when the headmaster had gone away and Mr Pople started marching us into the dining-room by forms, many of us had lost our appetites for the lumpy porridge that was to come.
I have still got all my school reports from those days more than fifty years ago, and I’ve gone through them one by one, trying to discover a hint of promise for a future fiction writer. The subject to look at was obviously English Composition. But all my prep-school reports under this heading were flat and non-committal, excepting one. The one that took my eye was dated Christmas Term, 1928. I was then twelve, and my English teacher was Mr Victor Corrado. I remember him vividly, a tall, handsome athlete with black wavy hair and a Roman nose (who one night later on eloped with the matron, Miss Davis, and we never saw either of them again). Anyway, it so happened that Mr Corrado took us in boxing as well as in English Composition, and in this particular report it said under English, ‘See his report on boxing. Precisely the same remarks apply.’ So we look under Boxing, and there it says, ‘Too slow and ponderous. His punches are not well timed and are easily seen coming.’
But just once a week at this school, every Saturday morning, every beautiful and blessed Saturday morning, all the shivering horrors would disappear and for two glorious hours I would experience something that came very close to ecstasy.
Unfortunately, this did not happen until one was ten years old. But no matter. Let me try to tell you what it was.
At exactly ten thirty on Saturday mornings, Mr Pople’s infernal bell would go clangetty-clang-clang. This was a signal for the following to take place:
First, all boys of nine and under (about seventy all told) would proceed at once to the large outdoor asphalt playground behind the main building. Standing on the playground with legs apart and arms folded across her mountainous bosom was Miss Davis, the matron. If it was raining, the boys were expected to arrive in raincoats. If snowing or blowing a blizzard, then it was coats and scarves. And school caps, of course – grey with a red badge on the front – had always to be worn. But no Act of God, neither tornado nor hurricane nor volcanic eruption was ever allowed to stop those ghastly two-hour Saturday morning walks that the seven-, eight- and nine-year-old little boys had to take along the windy esplanades of Weston-super-Mare on Saturday mornings. They walked in crocodile formation, two by two, with Miss Davis striding alongside in tweed skirt and woollen stockings and a felt hat that must surely have been nibbled by rats.
The other thing that happened when Mr Pople’s bell rang out on Saturday mornings was that the rest of the boys, all those of ten and over (about one hundred all told) would go immediately to the main Assembly Hall and sit down. A junior master called S. K. Jopp would then poke his head around the door and shout at us with such ferocity that specks of spit would fly from his mouth like bullets and splash against the window panes across the room. ‘All right!’ he shouted. ‘No talking! No moving! Eyes front and hands on desks!’ Then out he would pop again.
We sat still and waited. We were waiting for the lovely time we knew would be coming soon. Outside in the driveway we heard the motor-cars being started up. All were ancient. All had to be cranked by hand. (The year, don’t forget, was around 1927/28.) This was a Saturday morning ritual. There were five cars in all, and into them would pile the entire staff of fourteen masters, including not only the headmaster himself but also the purple-faced Mr Pople. Then off they would roar in a cloud of blue smoke and come to rest outside a pub called, if I remember rightly, ‘The Bewhiskered Earl’. There they would remain until just before lunch, drinking pint after pint of strong brown ale. And two and a half hours later, at one o’clock, we would watch them coming back, walking very carefully into the dining-room for lunch, holding on to things as they went.
So much for the masters. But what of us, the great mass of ten-, eleven- and twelve-year-olds left sitting in the Assembly Hall in a school that was suddenly without a single adult in the entire place? We knew, of course, exactly what was going to happen next. Within a minute of the departure of the masters, we would hear the front door opening, and footsteps outside, and then, with a flurry of loose clothes and jangling bracelets and flying hair, a woman would burst i
nto the room shouting, ‘Hello, everybody! Cheer up! This isn’t a burial service!’ or words to that effect. And this was Mrs O’Connor.
Blessed beautiful Mrs O’Connor with her whacky clothes and her grey hair flying in all directions. She was about fifty years old, with a horsey face and long yellow teeth, but to us she was beautiful. She was not on the staff. She was hired from somewhere in the town to come up on Saturday mornings and be a sort of baby-sitter, to keep us quiet for two and a half hours while the masters went off boozing at the pub.
But Mrs O’Connor was no baby-sitter. She was nothing less than a great and gifted teacher, a scholar and a lover of English Literature. Each of us was with her every Saturday morning for three years (from the age of ten until we left the school) and during that time we spanned the entire history of English Literature from AD 597 to the early nineteenth century.
Newcomers to the class were given for keeps a slim blue book called simply The Chronological Table, and it contained only six pages. Those six pages were filled with a very long list in chronological order of all the great and not so great landmarks in English Literature, together with their dates. Exactly one hundred of these were chosen by Mrs O’Connor and we marked them in our books and learned them by heart. Here are a few that I still remember:
AD 597 St Augustine lands in Thanet and brings Christianity to Britain
731 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History
1215 Signing of the Magna Carta
1399 Langland’s Vision of Piers Plowman
1476 Caxton sets up first printing press at Westminster
1478 Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
1485 Malory’s Morte d’Arthur
1590 Spenser’s Faërie Queene
1623 First Folio of Shakespeare
1667 Milton’s Paradise Lost
1668 Dryden’s Essays
1678 Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress
1711 Addison’s Spectator
1719 Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
1726 Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels