My non-awaited musical memoir has rather hit the buffers in recent weeks. I’m something like 25,000 words in, which would not make for a particularly long read in its current half-arsed, jumbled state, and I’ve had to take a break because, quite frankly, I don’t know how to turn it into something vaguely coherent. The loneliness of the long distance writer, perhaps?
Apologies for the self-pitying nature of this blog, but somehow it goes with the territory of the failed, small-time, independent, non-celebrity writer. Sometimes, I yearn for the services of a copy editor, a mentor and, above all, a publisher to help guide me through the writer’s gloom, which That Second Difficult Book has become.
I am sure that top authors like Paris Fury (Tyson’s wife), Katie Price and Nadine Dorries don’t have these problems as their super soaraway books top the best selling lists week in week out.
My best selling book (I wish), Corfu, not a scorcher, was, frankly, a complete mess. A few plucky souls did purchase a copy and managed to keep my losses to somewhere around the £1000 mark, but some who did – see Amazon reviews – gave it the kicking it probably deserved. Did the negativity bother me? Of course it did. That’s why it has taken the best part of a decade to start writing a follow-up.
I cannot do fiction, either reading or writing, and envy those who can. I have neither the ability nor the imagination which is why I blog about real things. Writing an actual book is a different game altogether.
I’m writing about music because, apart from my family and friends (and books, holidays, cheese, wine etc), there’s nothing I enjoy more. All my life, music has played a part. Things that happened growing up, places I visited (Corfu seems to crop up all the time, embarrassingly so), girls I knew, people who died – there’s usually a song that takes me back to a different and probably better place. There are a few death and break up songs in the mix, too, to even things up a bit.
My love for music has only grown in the last few decades and it is closer now to be an all-encompassing obsession. Having realised relatively recently that actually there is a huge amount of great new music to listen to, alongside the soundtrack of all stages of my life, I have concluded that actually now we live in the greatest era for music that there has ever been. Not only do we have great new music, we have all the other music that has ever been made. And as befits obsession, there can never be enough music to listen to.
I have no doubts that, over the next year, I’ll finish the book and self-publish it through Amazon and I can say with great confidence, it won’t be any good.
It won’t be any good, but as with most things in my life, it will be the very best I can do and I suppose I can’t ask for anymore than that.
Music was my first love although it may not be my last (that’s Mrs Eclectic Blue) it will be my rubbish that appears under my name, not all some ghostwriter’s efforts. That, I kid myself, will make it more honest. Crap, maybe, but honest. Which, frankly, is the story of my life.
