I am always interested in the book-writing process. I have friends who have written books and whilst they appear to have slightly different processes, for all of them it does require a great deal of time, focus and persistence. The experience I had with my first effort was that it took much of my daily energy on a 7/7, though not 24/7, basis. It was hard work. Once my writing was done for the day, I had very little in the tank, mentally speaking anyway.
I am not going to pretend that my book will be at the high end of the market. It’s been a steep learning curve and I hope the finished product will be better than it appeared to me when I submitted it for proof-reading. I reached a point where I had pretty well run out of ideas and inspiration and of relevant things to write about, although before then it was a lot of fun.
Writing a book, or even this blog, would not have been possible if I was in full-time work. I appreciate that many writers do indeed work full-time, but I needed to be away from that in order to write. I know that the quality of my own writing, such as it is, would not be as good, or maybe it would be even worse, depending on your viewpoint, if I wrote in my spare time instead of my main time. When I had finished my day on the front line of the public sector, my creative mind was in slumber. I couldn’t do it. Which is why I marvel at Boris Johnson. (Well, I don’t, actually, but read on.)
Johnson has just signed a £500k deal to write a book about William Shakespeare. I would have thought this would be quite a taxing project given the research that would be required. I bow to no one in my apathy for any of Shakespeare’s work, but I do know there’s lots of it and I would imagine the finished article would be a rather large volume. Away from his deeply contrived public persona as the amiable buffoon, Johnson is actually no one’s fool, least of all the one he pretends to be. The Old Etonian, Bullingdon Club member is a smart operator and he knows his history. I am sure it will be a good read, if you like that kind of thing.
But isn’t Johnson a busy man already? He is the Mayor of London and since May has been the MP for Uxbridge, as well as chairing or co-chairing six London organisations and being a member of 22 others. I had enough trouble doing one full time job, but it appears Johnson has two full-time jobs and a whole range of other commitments to fit in around them. And now he is writing a book about Shakespeare. When William Hague write a book about Pitt the Younger, he was merely a full time MP and cobbled together a book of around 700 pages in his spare time. More impressively, a few years later he wrote a book about William Wilberforce whilst simultaneously carrying out the work of being an MP and being shadow Foreign Secretary.
I’m afraid I remain extremely cynical about all this. It’s not just Johnson and Hague who always seem to have the time to do lots of other, often lucrative, jobs whilst purporting to represent us and I simply cannot believe that an MP’s job is that arduous if they have all this spare time. My experience with local MPs was that they visited the constituency monthly where they would hold surgeries and if you wrote to them, someone else would reply on their behalf. They turned up at the Commons if they liked, but no one made them. It was nice work if you could get it. I know that not all MPs are like that, but I always find in life if someone makes a point of telling you how hard they work, they probably don’t.
