Bourgeois Bears and Blogs

Feeling this edgy and sleep deprived is a lot more fun if it involves jetlag and a beach somewhere. I like the Louise Bourgeois print above - it's pinned to my board. Days like today I need to be reminded of simple things like this. Be Calm. Breathe. We were up rather early today. One of those broken nights - dragged from deep, glorious sleep into the pitch dark, still hours of the morning by a plaintive wail. It's times like this I really miss the pilot - at least if you can say 'oh no, not again ...' to the other warm bod responsible for all this it makes the whole thing easier. The toddler had had a bad dream, and even after cuddles and stories didn't want to go to sleep. So we have been watching Bear in the Big Blue House since the early hours, and I've been flicking through the blogosphere (this is what passes for quality time at moments like this, at least we are in the same room). Sometimes I wish Bear would adopt me and tuck me up in a cosy bed alongside Ojo and Treelo in that lovely Blue House.

It still feels like I have belatedly discovered a whole new culture in blogging. Amazing to see that some of the big blogs have been around for four years or so, and curious to see how versatile a form it is - how many uses people put blogging to, including making a living through stealth (or not so stealthy) marketing. Perhaps I'm being rather green about all this? I stumbled into a feud on Blogher - wow, people take blogging very seriously don't they? One of the writing blogs flagged up as a goodie was Grumpy Old Bookman - Michael Allen very generously has a free PDF down load of his book The Truth About Writing, which makes sobering reading. Check out these axioms:

"The so-called advance is actually a retrospective.

Most publishers can recognise a bestseller, but only when it was published two years earlier and they have the sales figures in front of them.

Publishing depends, for its continuance, upon a ceaseless flow of mugs, suckers, and assorted halfwits who are prepared to work for a year or more without any serious prospect of remuneration"

Does that sound about right to you? A year or more? Mug, sucker, halfwit? Feels rather like it this morning - but then I've had only a couple of hours sleep as I wrote late last night, (the thought of escaping to a grown up 9 - 5 work land with that demob happy TFI Friday feeling and a real live regular paycheque is strangely alluring). Surely it depends what you want from your writing. The axioms are based on financial gain. My accountant would be delighted to see a 'retrospective' around about now, but money wasn't my driving force (if it was, I would have gone to work in the City like a lot of people I knew at school - who have now paid off their mortgages, drive Porsches, and are sipping rose by their pools in the Dordogne ... but let's not go there). That was one insight that took me years to figure out - academic success at school is no indicator of success in later life. The guys who flunk everything and yet are incredibly successful got there because they wanted success - pure and simple.

Writing wasn't a choice - the books were there, they had and have to be written. In my 'day jobs' I have always chosen work that stretched my mind and heart rather than inflated the bank balance, and crucially gave me time to read and write (volunteering, running arts festivals, working with underprivileged children, art consultancy). Perhaps you are the same? However, I didn't really know I was ambitious until I had children - all I've ever wanted was to write great books that people enjoy. Now, through doing that professionally I want to help build a secure and happy future for my family. Amazing how a sense of responsibility for small people suddenly makes pursuing art seem a luxury. Even Jane Austen said with her dying breaths on TV the other night (obviously not her personally, but an actress portraying how she felt she had let her family down by not being successful enough) 'Rich is just another word for safe'. Ouch. It may not be perfect, (let's face it - to have it all, something has got to give, there has to be compromise), but to work to the best of your abilities, bring home the bacon and be there for your (happy well adjusted) family - that's the dream isn't it, that's success? Eudaimonia. Or to have your cake and eat it. It's so close now. I can almost feel it. Maybe I am a mug or an idealist but it's not too much to ask for all this hard work is it? I mean, even Bear gets to drive home in a convertible. Cha cha cha.

TODAY'S PROMPT: What do you want from your writing? Why not have a think about your end goal? Is it fortune, is it fame, and a neon lighted name? Or would you take the fortune and retreat Salinger-like to the hills? Perhaps you are writing for you alone and not for publication or profit at all. We've established a lot of writers are generalists. Rowena raised an interesting question yesterday - is it even possible to be a mother and artist? Are we really mugs, suckers and halfwits, or are writers idealists as well as generalists? Does blogging help your career - or is it keeping you from your 'real' work?