The Future of Writing - Or, Literature is the New Rock 'n' Roll

It's no easy task being a writer. I certainly don't believe one 'chooses' to be a writer - I shan't say 'become' a writer, because the word has implications of evolution. That isn't to say that a writer doesn't evolve or grow - writing requires a great deal of practice and commitment - but a writer doesn't start as something else and then slowly turn into a writer. No, a writer starts out as a writer, and over time develops with time, practice and experience. Well, so one would hope, and I'm quite certain that my own output now is almost infinitely better than it was fifteen years ago. But I'd still say I was a writer then. I didn't choose to write. It was a compulsion. Same as it is now.

What irks me are the 'aspiring' writers. To clarify, I'm not referring to the writers who write and aspire to be published, or the published writers who want to hit the best-seller lists (although any writer with any knowledge of writing and the industry will know that an infinitesimal number of writers with product even graze any sales charts). No, I'm referring to those people who aspire to write. The ones who talk to you at the office or at parties when you don't want them to, and after what feels like hours of tedious waffle, they inform you that they're 'thinking of writing a novel.' Now, thinking is all well and good: planning is important. But ask them what their plot is, and they haven't got one. Precisely how much thinking have you done? Ask them how many words they've got down. 'None yet..." is almost invariably the reply. Right.

Sinclair Lewis said, "if you want to be a writer, learn to type." With word-processing technology where it is now, this advice seems rather redundant. But there's an element to this statement that remains relevant, in that no one who never wrote a single word has ever made it as a writer. And unless you happen to have someone to hand to take dictation 24/7 - one never knows when 'inspiration' will hit - you're not going to get very far with that novel unless you actually get some words down. Surely it's obvious: the clue's in the name - writer. A writer writes. Just as a footballer plays football, a taxi driver drives taxis, a shelf-stacker stacks shelves and a teacher teaches. Otherwise, writers would be called 'sit about and occasionally think about how nice it would be to write a hit novel and get famousers.'

Worst of all are the (aspiring) 'writers' who aren't readers. You don't write out of nothing... or if you do, you shouldn't. You can't design cars without looking at the cars that have already been designed and made, successfully or otherwise. Even punk bands have to have a rudimentary understanding of music before they kick out their three-chord wonders. No one forms a band without first listening to some music, so why would anyone think that writing is a good idea without first seeing what's already out there? I've had conversations with some of these 'wannabe' writers who don't read, and they'll start telling me about their fantastic 'original' idea. Which has of course already been done. To death. And won the Booker prize eight years ago.

While I personally find it difficult to read while writing (by which I don't mean at precisely the same time, I only have one pair of eyes), William Burroughs noted that "I have never known a writer who was not at one time or another an avid reader." It stands to reason, really. If you have an interest in writing, surely it follows - or should even precede - that you have an interest in what's written. In my experience, the majority of people who are 'thinking' about writing but have done little or no reading are so self-obsessed and egotistical they believe they have no need to read, and believe that only what they have to say is important. The kind of person you hear dominating every conversation in the pub, the kind of person you immediately hate and want to full their mouth with fist simply to make them shut up.

Ok, so you have the drive, the motivation, the ideas and the commitment, you've got 60,000 words of dazzling prose down. You've got eyebags resting on your jowls after all the long nights, your fingers ache from hours of frantic typing. Yeah! You're a writer.

The trouble is, as I said, it's no easy task being a writer. I can often be heard bawling that 'literature is the new rock 'n' roll.' I do believe it, and it's perhaps as well, since I failed to make my mark on rock 'n' roll, and since I'm actually better suited to writing than music anyway, given that I'm possessed of neither looks nor musical ability (having one of these attributes, but not necessarily both, is a big help in 'making it' in music). And now, of course, being over 30, I'm too old to be 'up and coming' in music anyway: popular music has always been the domain of the young, and having passed 30, I'm starting to feel very fucking old when I go to gigs and the like.

Fortunately, writing has no age limit, and usually being young is more of a disadvantage. No one takes a nineteen-year-old novelist seriously. And why should they? What life experience have they had? What time have they had to hone their skills and develop their understanding of life and the medium? So you've got your writing, but how do you get your words to the masses?

Herein lies the greatest problem, and I'm afraid as I write this I do not have the solution. It's at this point that rock 'n' roll has the edge over literature. You get a support slot at your local venue after pleading and crying at the guy or girl who books the bands. Or you're really lucky and have a mate in another band who hands you supports. This is quite likely given that most people in bands are quite social animals (this may explain why my music career was short-lived). You've got 15 minutes, and in that time, 20, 30, 50, 100 people have hard your music. If you're lucky, one per cent of those people like your music, and may come to your next gig, and bring some of their mates. They may even buy your record or download your MP3 (here is not the place to lament the demise of vinyl and the rise of the MP3, which is a crap format on every level). You set up a page on MySpace. The second anyone comes to your page, they hear your music. If you're lucky, one per cent of those people like your music, and may come to your next gig, and bring some of their mates. They may even buy your record or download your MP3. Bang! You're the new Arctic Monkeys.

But with writing, it's a whole lot more difficult. You send your work round every agent in the Writer's Handbook and the Writers and Artist's Yearbook. They all say they're loving your work, but they're not able for whatever reason to take you on. You go it alone and tout your work round every publisher in the Writer's Handbook and the Writers and Artist's Yearbook. They all say they're loving your work, but they're not able for whatever reason to publish it. But you're undeterred, you need to get it out there somehow... but how?

No support slots. You can't ride on the coat-tails of another writer that easily. You set up a MySpace page and start posting stuff. Your page gets a few hits, but... you can lead a horse to water... And there's the rub. How many people who hit the blogs actually read to the end? And even if you manage to build up a readership, how many of these people would actually buy your book? Giving stuff away for free is one thing, but getting people to art with their cash entirely another.

I suppose where I'm leading with this is to consider the future of writing. In 1959, Brion Gysin said "writing is fifty years behind painting" and applied the montage technique to words on a page. And so occurred the advent of the cut-up. But 48 years on, and writing is thirty years behind music. As an industry, publishing is way behind. But where can I go, when its medium has quite obvious limitations, which are even more apparent in our postmodern culture in which everyone seems to suffer from attention - and time - deficit. How to make the medium as immediate as music? Somehow, I don't think that MP3 versions of audiobooks is going to be the solution. But I may be willing to give it a try...