Not writing

Last Friday it was twenty-eight degrees in the shade, or thirty degrees, if one was to believe the car thermometer, but it always exaggerates. Rewe was an attractive place around which to meander for an hour or so, not to buy much, but to enjoy the air conditioning. Browsing DVD's and car cleaning kits, neither of which would normally be of much interest, passed some minutes. Then I saw the large book selection.

It is over forty years since I developed an aspiration to become a writer, not a famous writer, not a wealthy writer, it would be enough to be able to write bad novels, making just enough to get by. A regular money flow that would enable the purchase of a small cottage somewhere, a place within walking distance of a village which had a bread shop and a cafe. 

The flaw in the plan was the inability to write in any way that might earn an income; writing commercially is an extraordinary skill, to be able to write the sort of fiction that people might buy really is a rare talent. Of course, there have been ideas for plots and characters, some storylines that might have been developed, it’s just that when the words are typed, they fall apart, sentences become badly formed, paragraphs have to be forced into shape, there has never been a complete page. Bad novels required considerably more ability than anticipated by someone who would have casually dismissed such literary efforts.

Perhaps the attractions would quickly have paled, perhaps one winter would have been enough. Anyway, without the freedom a writer’s life might have offered, a life in the countryside never became a possibility, though one can still dream.