Extract from the Introduction

WRITING IS AN activity which can seriously damage your health. It can consume huge amounts of time and energy, and it can lead to frustration, rage, and bitterness. The overall purpose of this book is therefore to protect and preserve the sanity of anyone who is unfortunate enough to be afflicted with the ambition to write.

As the title implies, I shall tell you the truth about writing – the truth about your chances of success when you bang your head against the brick wall of book publishers’ and film producers’ indifference. As is often the case, the truth does not make for comfortable reading, but the fact that this book does not pull any punches is what makes it valuable to you, the Reader, because most books about writing don’t tell you the truth at all. Instead, they lead you to believe that success – in the form of money, fame and prizes – lies just down the road, and that all you have to do is pay a tuppenny bus fare and you will arrive there almost at once.

Unfortunately, life is not like that, and I have no intention of painting a misleading picture. The authors of other books for writers may be encouraging, cheerful, and full of hope and optimism; I, on the other hand, will be gloomy, pessimistic, and cynical. But I will, at least, be telling you the truth.

The book is aimed principally at those who intend to write novels, but there is much in it which will be useful to those working in the theatre, television, film, or radio.

With any luck, once you understand what an unrewarding and frustrating business writing is, you may abandon all thought of continuing, and take up something sensible, such as making quilts, or breeding budgerigars. But I doubt it, because most writers are, more or less by definition, completely crackers. They are people who are congenitally incapable of looking a fact in the face and recognising it for what it is. And I speak as someone who has been at it for nearly fifty years, so I should know.


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