‘Maybe this time,’ sings Liza Minnelli in the 1972 film, Cabaret, at the beginning of a wistful song of almost certainly dashed dreams. It remains, with Love Actually, one of only two films I have to admit to having watched ten times, three of them on consecutive nights at the Minema in Knightsbridge in 1977, just as hope remains the cornerstone of why we all get up in the morning. After all, we didn’t become top animal by our ancestors looking out of the cave and saying: ‘do you know? I might just lie low and sit this decade out’.
By and large, I write better about failure than success. Failure, so long as it is not catastrophic, is an easy win, as the reader is generally on your side from the start, if only because your lack of perceived success gives them the warm feeling of simultaneously not being challenged by a superhero or annoyed by a braggard. It all started with being the class comedian at school, which I was so as to ensure that, if anyone was going to get the first blow in, it was always going to be me. Over the years, I’ve seen no reason to change this.
Occasionally on this blog, I specifically mention fragments out of my new career as a writer, not so much because I think it is fascinating in itself, but because the late life career switch is something that I have found genuinely interests and enthuses people. Eighteen months in, I suppose it’s not really a new career any more, but there is still freshness in every day, even when it is only cosmetic freshness that ices over the cake of everyday concerns. And if your question remains: ‘have you taken leave of your senses?’, the answer is still ‘probably’.
But this week, just back from a slightly challenging research trip in Patagonia, there are some quite exciting things going on which for balance must also be mentioned. Like a radio interview on Monday to talk about Unlimited Overs. I mean, how good is a Monday morning when you are given ten minutes to evangelise about why people should buy your last book for Christmas?
And like a long conversation yesterday with the American distributor for Liquid Gold(the bee book that will be coming out on March 5th) where the US sales force has expressed a genuine enthusiasm, and where it is shortly to be offered to 6000 independent booksellers. And the knowledge that some actor is already recording the audio version for release in May, and my childish wonder as to what on earth it is going to sound like to me when I play it in my car. And the loveliness that, at home, a national newspaper is going to do a short serialisation of the book in the week before its launch.
Don’t worry on my account about overconfidence. That has never been a big problem to me. I’m sixty in two weeks’ time, an age at which I am more than aware that these are no more than indicators, little sign posts that it is going in the right direction. There is still the chance that reviewers or, much more important, readers will dislike it, but I do know this much, it is as good as we can possibly make it. For it absolutely is ‘we’. The agent, the editor, the proof reader, the cover designer, the type setter, the PR consultant and the sales and marketing arm of the publishing company all throw their efforts, skills and- yes- love behind the project to make the book as good as it can possibly be. Working with them all is life-affirmingly good, and removes much of the incidental loneliness of sitting in front of a screen for six months and writing.
So we will see. But right now, I cannot say that it, and I, haven’t been given every chance.
Maybe this time…
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