I daresay the writing gene will continue on its rambling path through the generations. My grandfather, my mother, my father, my uncle, all wrote novels of varying quality and degrees of success. There always has to be someone around to create this stockpile of alternative universes. Who knows what will happen next, when they’ll be needed? See me as the old shambling caretaker down at the recycling centre. Do this, do that. Put this here, put that there, don’t do that on any account, more than my job’s worth etc. Somebody has to do it.
The writer, like the criminal, has always been at the base of an inverted pyramid, providing work and profit for others. The greatest good, politicians have observed, lies in the providing of employment.
The criminal’s one delinquent act provides work and wages for policemen and women, prison warders, court officials, solicitors, barristers, judges, journalists, academics, criminologists, legislators. Similarly, the writer’s act of creation – making something where there was nothing there before – provides work for agents, publishers, copy editors, designers, printers, typographers, booksellers, sales reps, publicists, teachers, professors, critics, reviewers, journalists, librarians, festival organisers, academics, historians, cultural commentators and commissars of all kinds. That’s a whole lot of people. Let them be grateful to you, not the other way round!
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