The evolution of evolution
If you’re in Bristol and have nothing on this coming Sunday tea-time, May 20, book yourself a ticket for this. STOP PRESS: Actually, don’t. It’s now been cancelled!
If you don’t know this stuff, you might be under the impression that Darwin’s theory of evolution emerged more or less solely from Darwin’s brain after years of studying and thinking. If you know a bit about this stuff, you’ll know he published Origin of Species in a bit of a hurry on learning that the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace had arrived at the same idea, and that Darwin’s publication consequently turned Wallace into the Pete Best of biology. If you know a bit more, you’ll know that Darwin’s own grandfather Erasmus Darwin, a much more interesting and charismatic personality than this grandson could ever be, was pretty sure himself that life on earth had somehow evolved from the primordial ooze.
The evolution of evolution, though, is actually way more complicated and interesting, and to get some idea how lengthy that process was you need Rebecca Stott’s compelling and beautifully-written book, Darwin’s Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists. In this, she takes us through several individuals who dabbled in, or spent entire lifetimes, studying the origins and development of plants and creatures. From Aristotle bothering the fishermen of Lesbos for samples through a French Protestant potter who made plates representing pond-life and on to Erasmus Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, she introduces us to an astonishingly large cast of Darwin’s antecedents. There may be some danger that historians and scientists alike will get sniffy about her being a novelist and maybe taking a little dramatic licence here and there, but there’s no question it’s a lovely read and if you want to be all serious about the history and/or science this is a superb starting point for further exploration because, like all the best history books, it makes you go, “That’s interesting, I never knew that!” every few pages.
Maybe she’ll be doing the Bristol gig some other time.
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Old Bristol movie binge!
Fancy spending a whole Sunday afternoon looking at films made in/around Bristol in the 1960s and 70s? ‘Course you do!
Then book now for this Bristol Festival of Ideas event. I’m going to be emceeing it, but that doesn’t have to put you off as there will also be guest speakers involved in the productions who’ll be introducing each film.
They’re actually old BBC productions from back in the day when the telly routinely made large numbers of one-off dramas of the kind they don’t do anymore, so whatever their artistic merits, each should also be an interesting little piece of social history. Or you can simply get off on seeing what the old place looked like back in the day.
I’ve not seen any of them yet (and don’t want to spoil my own fun on the day), but certainly Drums Along the Avon, with Leonard Rossiter blacking up to challenge the racism of his wife and neighbours has acquired a reputation. Lots of people half-remember it, or have heard about it, and this is a rare opportunity to actually see it. Of course it might turn out to be one of those well-meaning but ham-fisted 1970s-style satires of racism in the manner of that sitcom ‘Love Thy Neighbour’.
So do come along if you can. It’ll only be raining that afternoon anyway.
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Is this thing switched on? <Tap! Tap!> OK. Here goes …
Mah fellow Bristolians! As you know, the city is to hold a referendum on May 3 on whether or not it wants an elected mayor with executive powers or, if you’re a Post reader, a “Bristol Boris”.
The people have been calling upon me to stand for mayor.
The privatised care home people, the private education people, the privatised police people… All sorts of people.
Reluctant though I am to take up the heavy burden of office, I feel called upon by this great city of ours to make the necessary sacrifices to provide Bristol with the leadership it so desperately needs in these difficult and challenging times.
The present tired system is broken, not fit for purpose. We are all tired of the petty point-scoring among the political parties on the council. Bristol needs real leadership, free of party political bickering, and for that leadership, we need to look to the business community.
I mean, for God’s sake, why? What makes business people more capable of running councils than councillors and council officers, or academics, trade unionists, teachers, vicars, lawyers or scientists, say? WTF endows used car salesmen, financial hucksters or grocers with the wisdom of Solomon, the incorruptibility of a Gandhi and the political nous of a Machiavelli? It’s rubbish!! Everyone’s led by the nose by big business lobbying and media manipulation to think the private sector is wiser, more efficient and capable than anyone else. It’s a lie! The poisonous, idiotic orthodoxy of the times. But hey, let’s go with the flow …
As a highly respected member of the business community, I will kick ass down the council house! The business of Bristol is business. Business must be allowed to take care of business, except when business needs to mind its own business. I cannot be any clearer than that!
Pause for cheering here. <Sound of crickets>
I mean, this is a Tory government as wants England’s “core cities” to have elected mayors. Their calculation is that we all end up electing business people as independents. Obviously people from the business community usually sign up to Tory views on most things. And where that doesn’t work you’ll get actual paid-up Tories standing as “independents”. Chapter One of the Conservative manual of local government; in places where people won’t vote Tory, pretend you’re an “independent”. Look at Bristol; for several decades of the 20th century there were few or no Conservatives on Bristol City Council; they called themselves the Bristol Citizen group instead. They only came out as Tories when the county of Avon came into being in 1974; Avon was of course the creation of a Conservative government which calculated (correctly) that while the old city of Bristol would never be Conservative, Avon, with its commuter suburbs and small towns and villages, would be Tory most of the time. That doesn’t necessarily make elected mayors a bad idea, by the way. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a businessman. And it almost certainly will be a man.
A vote for me will also be a vote for valves. You have valves. I have valves. This great city of ours has been built on traditional valves.
Oh. Heh! Right! Can’t read the back of this fag packet! My bad.
Values. Bristol also has values. Vote for me for values. Not valves. Not that I have anything against the valve community.
I am also the candidate of common sense. For instance, I always take an umbrella if it looks like it’s going to rain and I make sure I get plenty of roughage in my diet. My administration will run Bristol in a similar fashion.
Vote for me for sustainability, too. As mayor, I will reject the gas guzzling limo, but travel in a gilded horse-drawn carriage. My opponents will of course say this is a reckless extravagance, but I shall silence them by having my officials put the horse manure on their rhubarb.
In the council house canteen, instead of custard. Oh my aching sides!
A vote for Byrne is also a vote for the family.
A vote for my family, anyway. Mrs Byrne becomes city treasurer to build up her collection of shoes. The eldest son takes charge of the police, which he’s already told me he plans to re-name “The Elite 19th Brigade”. The other son can be Archbishop of Bristol. My brother will expect to be on the payroll as he’s out of Horfield Nick. Given his longstanding expertise in roof lead, copper wire and manhole covers, he’s a natural for the recycling contract.
A vote for Byrne is also a vote for the fine old traditions of our proud and ancient city.
I’m especially keen on that 18th century tradition of the 12-course banquet, washed down with a couple of hogsheads of Madeira, for the mayor and his cronies every day. Hey, this is cool! I’ve just looked up “hogshead” on Wikipedia and it says it’s 54 gallons [and not 121 as I said originally. Damn these new privatised spectacles]. If you want to know why for most of its history Bristol was built of wood and plaster with no sanitation, running water or electricity it’s because the city’s management was permanently, stinkingly drunk for 900 years.
Finally, my fellow citizens, I will give you your stadium! Ladies and gentlemen, behold your Boris!!!
Done and done! If we get mayoral elections the turnout will be so low that anyone promising to build the stadium wins at a stroke, with 30,000 City fans marching zombie-like into the polling booths. And when it turns out that I can’t build the stadium as the elected mayor has no influence over planning decisions, I will blame feather-bedded fat cat council officials, Trots and anarchists, the EU, the Tory Con-Dem government and if all else fails, South Gloucestershire council and the Iranians.
What? What do you mean this bloody microphone is still switched on!!? Damn!
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R.I.P. Venue magazine
After 30 years almost to the day, Venue magazine will cease to be a print edition as of the next edition, out at the end of this month. It will continue as an online listings guide, and will provide the what’s on content for Northcliffe’s other titles locally, including the Evening Post, Bristol Observer and the local Metro.
This is a hell of a wrench for several people. Some Venue staff and freelancers will now be laid off. There certainly won’t be much room for me in this new scheme of things, but heigh-ho, we had a damn good run at it. It was a great laugh, I became lifelong friends with some wonderful people and I think the old rag probably did Bristol a lot of favours down the years. Didn’t do much harm anyway.
This latest move comes a year after Venue went from weekly to monthly publication, and is part of a wider reorganisation of what remains the Northcliffe empire locally. The Evening Post now becomes The Post (since it’s actually been published every morning for years). It will no longer publish a Saturday edition, and 19 people will be made redundant – about a third of the remaining staff. Casualties will include the Post’s underappreciated staff photographers, who get offered freelance contracts instead.
So then, another footnote in the long, slow death of Britain’s regional press that’s been going on for years now. And frankly a catastrophe for local democracy, ‘specially at a time when we’re talking about changing the system so’s we give huge amounts of power and influence to an individual in the form of an elected mayor.
Remember that what most of what passes nowadays for news in the local media, print and broadcast, has originated as a press release from your local council, local constabulary, or from a business. This trend will continue to the point where virtually all control of your local news agenda is in the hands of large public and private organisations.
We’ll share out the blame some other time.
The Venue-sized gap in my schedule and the death of print generally means I’m running out of excuses to avoid the Big Project I Wasn’t Going To Start For Another Ten Years Should I Live That Long. Damn!
I’m going to miss Venue and its people, and it’s looking like I won’t be reporting/investigating any local news and issues anymore, aside of course from the occasional grumpy and semi-informed blog posting, most of which can probably be filed under the generic headline COUNCIL DOES SOMETHING STUPID. Exactly the sort of thing the local press used to do.
Meanwhile, I’ve a few very talented former colleagues who will be looking for work. If anyone needs a journalist – and let’s face it, there are times when we all need a journalist – give them a shout down at Venue and the Post.
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Banksy: The Bristol Legacy
Bristol’s very wonderful Redcliffe Press has just published BANKSY: THE BRISTOL LEGACY, a book about the 2009 Banksy show at the City Museum & Art Gallery. The exhibition attracted over 300,000 visitors and established, once and for all, that street art or graffiti, or whatever you call things painted on walls by people who don’t always have the property owner’s permission, was a key part of the Bristol brand.
I’m responsible for one of the book’s chapters, but don’t let that put you off buying it as editor Paul Gough has pulled together plenty of talented, and incisive contributors to look at all manner of aspects of the show and its aftermath, from arts critics and curators to economists and lawyers.
Me, personally, I don’t know nothing about art, but what does interest me in the case of Banksy and Bristol’s other street artists, is the changing nature of their relationship with Official Bristol. A few of us made some short speeches at the book launch. Here’s what I said:
In the last 25 years or so, official Bristol has performed one of the most remarkable U turns in the city’s entire history.
Back in the 1980s young graffiti artists were arrested, hauled before the beaks, given criminal records and generally treated as vandals.
The local media generally gave them a hard time, though not nearly as much as the correspondents in the letters pages, some of whom really did say they hadn’t fought a world war just so’s these young punks could make a mess of our city.
Naturally, we at Venue magazine were all liberal about it. Every year or so for about 20 years we’d do a big article about street art, usually with the headline or strapline is it art or is it vandalism?
Hindsight suggests we were slightly missing the point. You can parachute in a crack elite squad of highly trained art critics and never get any real agreement. In any event the question is irrelevant.
Instead, the question we should all have been asking all along, is “do we want this stuff on the walls of our city, or what?”
The answer that the Bristolian public came up with, long before most councillors, was a resounding yes, and much of that is down to Banksy.
Nowadays, graffiti is a key part of the Bristol brand. It’s up there with Brunel and Wallace and Gromit when we’re trying to bring in tourists, students or attract business.
Last year’s See No Evil street art festival was a huge success, as of course was the Banksy museum show before that. We’ve now taken graffiti so much to heart that in the case of Stokes Croft, official Bristol is prepared to believe that it might even be instrumental in turning around an area with all manner of social and economic problems.
In less than a generation, graffiti has gone from being the problem to the solution.
And if there’s any individual who’s responsible for that remarkable turnaround, it’s been Banksy.
Many, maybe most, of us think that the Banksy museum show was the key turning point in that transformation. But in my contribution to this book I suggest that the moment civic Bristol performed its historic U turn was actually a few years before that. Buy the book and feel free to disagree.
Now we face probably several decades of new debate in the media and on the internet about whether our graffiti artists have sold out to The Man, or whether they’re keeping it real, or what?
If we do that, we’ll be missing the point again. Who cares if they’ve sold out or not? The question will always be whether or not we want this stuff on our walls.
There’s another question, too. And that’s whether or not we’ll be smart enough to recognise it when – if – a new generation of youngsters comes along, maybe pursuing some new, different creative avenue. Will we be smart enough to realise it when we’re confronted with a new group of enterprising, gutsy kids who are inspiring and entertaining us … Or will we persecute them, and post moans on the message-boards about how we didn’t fight World War Three just so’s these young punks could take the mickey.
I hope not. I like to think that actually, Bristol nowadays is a far more intelligent place. And one of the things that’s made us more intelligent is all that thought-provoking, weird, decorative, funny or sometimes just plain enigmatic stuff on walls all over the city. In the 1980s all we had were billboards advertising booze, fags and cars. We have come a very long way, so well done Banksy and well done us.
# See http://redcliffepress.co.uk/news/banksy-the-bristol-legacy/
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Bristol myths again
Book your tickets now for a wee talk I’ll be doing at Arnos Vale Cemetery on local myths on the afternoon of April Fool’s Day. All the money goes to Arnos Vale, and not me. so that’s alright then.
I mean, if it’s a nice day, you can then spend some time before or after listening to me communing with dead Bristolians in this very remarkable place. Sounds good to me.
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Historic illiteracy
Every family has its dirty secrets. Well, most families. Though not mine, of course.
It comes as no surprise to learn that even Professor Richard Dawkins, scourge of superstition and credulity, or Satan’s Useful Idiot (delete according to taste) numbers a slave owner among his ancestors.
For this shock horror revelation we have to thank an article in the Sunday Telegraph which the paper may regard as honest investigative journalism, or it may be some gleeful attempt at a hatchet job. No matter.
Now someone will have to do the research to get the exact numbers, but the point is that many, many Britons have slavers among their ancestors. If your own personal genealogy includes members of the British middle and professional classes going back 200 years or more it is almost a certainty that they made some of their money directly or indirectly from the West Indies sugar trade, whether as owners or part-owners of plantations, or as owners or part-owners of businesses supplying or profiting from a huge range of ancilliary trades. Even if your ancestors were, say, building workers, they may have built houses paid for on the profits of slaving.
You can argue about the differences in moral culpability between an actual plantation owner who witnessed exactly how his business was run and, say, an impoverished sailor who felt he had no choice but to sign up for a slaving voyage, but the point is that there were few corners of the British economy that slavery didn’t touch, however indirectly, between the early 1700s and early 1800s.
When slavery was abolished by Act of Parliament in Britain and all her colonies in 1833, the government paid out about £20 million in compensation to the “owners”. (the actual slaves got nothing of course). This was a stupendous sum of money at the time, representing almost half the government’s annual expenditure. Historians argue about the impact that this immense injection of capital had, but it’s no accident that this payout was followed a few years later by the railway boom. Certainly my own casual forays into this in the Bristol area suggest that a chunk of the money used to build Brunel’s great railway line to London came from this source, but more work is needed here, so don’t quote me.
That £20 million quid was paid out to around 40,000 people, the great majority of them living in Britain and Ireland, some of them titled aristocrats, others were Church of England clergymen, and many were little old ladies in Tunbridge Wells living out modest retirements.
Now how many descendants do those 40,000 people have? Start in 1800, assume a generation every 25 years, assume that each generation produces two surviving children because they had much bigger families back in the day… and you end up with over 10 million people – and that is from actual owners alone, never mind all the others who profited from slavery in lesser ways.
If Dawkins has a slaver further down his evolutionary tree, then so, I bet, do several other staff on the Sunday Telegraph. And so, like it or not, do many members of the clergy.
Whatever the intentions of the article, it is, at best, historically illiterate.
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If you write sf/fantasy/speculative fiction, or have ever attempted it, you’ll know that people are always offering you ideas for stories.
Most of the time these suggestions (“There’s this whole galaxy in space, right, run by the Catholic church, and its entire economy is geared into the production of rosaries and statues and crucifixes… “) are made with the either humorous or completely serious demand for 50% of the proceeds.
That is, you, the writer, do 99.9% the work, while the non-writer gets half the royalties for nothing more than communicating to you a flash of inspiration they had when peeling the spuds or sitting in the bath.
The thing about ideas, though, is there’s no such thing as an original one. All art is plagiarism, and all that. In sf for instance, there’s no end of great stories about computers taking over the world. There are also a lot of dire tales about a couple who, in one way or another, end up going back to the beginning of time and who find, hey wow, that they’re Adam and Eve. Someone writing in Interzone years ago dubbed such tales “shaggy God stories”.
Ideas, like information, want to be free. The idea is not in itself the big thing in any creative venture; it’s the graft that goes into it. The finished work should be copyright to the creator, not the first notion.
I mention all this because a thing in yesterday’s Observer put me in mind of a story I wrote about 25 years ago. I’m not sure it was ever published and can’t find it anymore as it was probably lost in the Great Amstrad PCW Meltdown of ’89. The story mentioned, merely in passing, that in this world, artificial meat was produced for the masses in big vats. I called this stuff “shamburger”.
As the newspaper article states right from the start, though, my idea (apart from the name) was in no way original. Winston Churchill certainly got there first, and artificially-cultured flesh is probably a feature of countless sf stories since (I can’t think of any off-hand, although the thing about classic spec fiction ideas is that Isaac Asimov usually got there first. )
So now we’re on the verge of it becoming reality, raising all sorts of interesting questions for vegetarians and vegans.
But here’s an idea for you … Once the tech is established and working, it’ll only be a matter of time before some attention-seeker or celebrity chef will be offering human flesh on the menu. It may just turn out to be a gimmick, or more likely one of those things which a minority of folks seeking “decadent” thrills try and find they like. You get some human stem-cells, turn it into muscle fibres. Nobody gets hurt, and “long pig” is on the menu.
There are all sorts of moral objections to this, and of course religious types would probably be outraged, your publicity-seeking chef would say where’s the real harm? After all, how is this in any way worse than eating human placenta?
The question “who does it hurt?” is a reliable starting point for constructing a speculative fiction story.
Here’s one steer. That artificial human flesh would have to contain someone’s DNA. The stem cells have to come from someone. To start with, it’d probably be that same controversy-seeking celebrity chef. Maybe then it’d move on to the DNA of other celebrities living and dead, with or without their consent.
You figure out the rest of the story. I’m giving you this idea for free, don’t want 50% or even 1%. Ideas are free. The real work, and consequently the real value, is in turning them into stories with a beginning, middle and end. And the process of writing gives you loads more ideas as you go along, like a throwaway line about vat-grown shamburger.
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Who invented the blanket?
This here tomb is in St Stephen’s Church, Bristol, just off the city centre, a fabulously enigmatic place for all sorts of reasons, many of them to do with the Society of Merchant Venturers.
The tomb is nowt to do with the Venturers, though. It is generally thought to be the last resting place of a guy named Edmund Blanket, and of his wife, Mrs Blanket.
Local history enthusiasts will tell you of the local legend that Edmund Blanket invented, well, blankets.
Bristol’s most colourful Victorian newspaperman, Joseph Leech, wrote an extremely fanciful account of the blanket’s invention/discovery. In a story in Brief Romances from Bristol History (1884, a collection of what were originally articles in the Bristol Times) he imagined ‘Edward’ Blanket struggling to make his weaving business a success. One very cold night he and Mrs B were shivering in their bed covered only by a ‘camlet’ of goat hair. Then he had an idea; he went to his loom and took a length of woollen cloth he had been working on that day, and covered the bed with it. They slept snugly, and the following morning he told Mrs Blanket that he was going to go into the bed-covering business.
“My dearest dame,” said he, “I shall have the honour of giving a name to the article that will make my fortune and carry down my name to all future ages. Let others devote themselves to making cloth to keep them warm by day; be it my business henceforth to manufacture only that which will keep folks warm by night.”
Leech went on to call for an annual Blanket Day, in which Bristol would celebrate Mr Blanket’s most excellent discover/invention.
Of course the whole idea of the blanket being invented here is just a particularly bovine bit of local nominative determinism. The idiot and famously unimaginative ancestors leaping to a ridiculous conclusion, eh?
Well, yes, probably. But not definitely …
The words ‘blanket’ and ‘blanchette’ (plus assorted other medieval spellings) had been in use for at least 150 years before Edmund Blanket’s time. The Blanket family themselves might have got their name from being makers of this cloth, just as medieval blacksmiths acquired the surname Smith, and bakers became Bakers.
If you look closely enough, the idea of woollen bed-coverings being invented, or at least popularised, by a Bristolian is not completely ridiculous. It might, just might, have happened.
Only it wasn’t Edmund Blanket who did it. It was Thomas Blanket, who was Edmund’s brother, or possibly his father. Or maybe his son.
Weaving was medieval Bristol’s main industry, underpinning most of the town’s seaborne trade. It was tightly regulated by the guilds and the corporation to maintain the quality of the finished cloth and protect the interests of the weavers and associated trades.
King Edward III (reigned 1327-1377) started to change all that. He wanted the vast English cloth industry to be more profitable, all the better to tax it to pay for his wars. He restricted the wearing and importation of foreign cloth and the export from England of raw wool. He encouraged Flemish weavers to settle in England in order to build up the cloth industry. Some of them came to Bristol; the Blankets may have been Flemish themselves, or they may have brought in some of these foreign weavers.
In the late 1330s, Thomas Blanket set up several looms at his property in Tucker Street, just south of the Bristol Bridge. He was effectively setting up a factory, employing weavers rather than working as a self-employed artisan. Presumably his weavers hadn’t had to serve long apprenticeships in the traditional manner. The guilds and the Corporation didn’t like this and tried to put a stop to it.
Immediately, however, word came back from the King saying that Blanket was not to be impeded in any way:
“The said Thomas and the others who have chosen to work and make cloths of this sort, and also the workmen, should be protected and defended from injuries and improper exactions on that account. Order you, that you permit the said Thomas and the others who are willing to make cloths of this kind to cause machines to be erected in their own houses at their choice for the weaving and making cloths of this kind … “
The direct personal support of the king means Blanket was no mere clothier, but a very significant figure. The Corporation got the message and hurriedly performed a u-turn, and Thomas Blanket was made a local official in 1340. Blanket’s importance and royal support would have made him a well-known figure.
We don’t really know how people slept in the 14th century. Most poor people probably slept on the floor (perhaps on straw), fully or partially clothed, though getting completely naked to sleep was often favoured where possible as it helped get rid of the lice which infested most of our ancestors’ bodies.
The more prosperous classes owned beds, and may have slept in linen sheets under animal skins. Woollen cloth, meanwhile, was expensive stuff, produced by artisans … Until ruthless entrepreneurs like Thomas Blanket came along.
Blanket’s industrial production methods, however small they were by modern standards, may well have gone some way towards making woollen bed-coverings more affordable and fashionable. It’s possible that they became known by the name of the family who were making them.
There’s another intriguing scrap of circumstantial evidence from Witney in Oxfordshire. Witney was famous in the 19th and 20th centuries as the centre of Britain’s blanket industry. Until the duvet came along, almost everyone in Britain went to sleep under Witney blankets. Two separate 19th century histories of Witney both credit the invention of the blanket to “Thomas Blanket” or “Thomas à Blanket” of Bristol. (Giles, J.A.; History of Witney (J.R. Smith, London, 1852) and Monk, W.J.; History of Witney (J. Knight, Witney, 1894))
The good folk of Witney would have no reason to credit the main source of their prosperity to a Bristolian unless there was a strong local legend there, too.
So then, in summary: Few people, if any slept under woollen blankets until they became affordable and/or fashionable. Thomas Blanket’s industrial production methods would certainly have brought down the price of woollen cloth. He was a minor celebrity who was known throughout the land, and he was credited with inventing blankets not just in Bristol, but in the Oxfordshire village where their manufacture would become the main local industry.
Nope, we can’t yet definitively prove a Bristolian named Blanket invented woollen bedclothes. But I don’t think there’s any definitive proof that he didn’t either.
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Advice to aspiring writers
New Year coming up, I see. I reckon it’ll be:
1. Lose a bit of weight.
2. Get a bit more exercise.
3. Learn to play the trombone.
4. Research and write a history book that won’t make much money (possibly none at all) and which very few people will read.
5. Put fewer cigars in my mouth, or put the same number in, but set fire to fewer of them.
On second thoughts, I might pass on 3.
The best advice I ever heard to would-be writers goes like this:
Don’t do it. Unless you have to.
That’s resolution 4 in a nutshell. I’ve been thinking about this project for a while now. I know no publisher will want to pay much for it, if anything, and I know that when it comes out, in whatever form – it may be a self-publishing e-reader only job – no more than a few thousand people will read it. Many of them will be known to me personally. It’ll take two or three years to research and write. There’ll probably be a grand or two in costs for the research; a bunch of photocopying here, a journal subscription there. I’ll probably even have to pay for the launch party. You’re all invited; hope you don’t mind snacking on zbywoxlqurts and oskrapogis, but these east European meat product snacks from Lidl really are very competitively priced.
The upside? If I do this it’ll appease the angry wasp. The insect inside my skull that keeps nagging me to do this.
So there you go. Loads of time and effort for little reward. If it goes well it may earn some praise from people whose opinions I value, but praise don’t boil no cabbages.
Writing? Don’t do it. Unless you have to.
No, I’m not yet ready to reveal the nature of this project. I’m not bothered that anyone’s going to “steal” the idea for this history book, as there’s no real idea to steal. Just want to explore a few possible business models first. Hell, I might even come back to you via this here blog looking for some crowdsourced funding or summat. Give me £20 now and I’ll give you a signed copy and come round your house to do some ironing for you, sort of thing.
Who wants another oskrapogi?
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