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My Writing Career

My Writing Career

Ian Martin in Pearly Beach

My Writing Career

I began my writing career in 2000 at the age of 50. I was aware that the majority of famous writers hit their stride in their thirties and forties, and that I was making a late start. Undeterred, I told myself that my muse had been in no hurry, preferring to allow me sufficient time to accumulate a rich store of experience to draw on before releasing my pent-up creative energy.

It was also around this time that it dawned on me that I had finally developed a world view. I had given up the futile search for the meaning and purpose of life, and had reached a conclusion concerning human nature and my place in the cosmos, which I put into print in a 4500-word essay entitled, Why I Haven’t Killed Myself, Yet.

While my wife went out to work, and between homeschooling our two children and performing domestic drudgery, I set to work on a semi-autobiographical novel that I called The Life of Henry Fuckit. This took more than five years to write in longhand (I could still see well enough to put pen to paper), and at least another year for my teenage daughter to turn it into a Word document. I then approached a publisher and began the first of many demeaning encounters with literary gatekeepers.

Around this time, in 2007, I started to use a PC. Having hit a brick wall with Henry, I decided to try my hand at some commercial fiction and wrote Pop-splat, a fast-paced modern novel with plenty of violence and sex in it.  After three rejections, I began to explore the possibility of self-publication. My wife reluctantly agreed to ‘invest’ R25000 in the printing of 1000 copies of my book, which I assured her would fly off the shelves and make us a profit of R50000.

I tenaciously badgered the book editors of numerous magazines and newspapers, sending them copies of the novel and requesting a review. This proved a lengthy process but eventually yielded several positive results, which I used as promotional material.

“How many books have you sold?” my financial backer asked me after a year. “When am I going to get my money back?”

I had to admit that only some 200 copies had flown off the shelves, and nearly 700 were still in the printer’s warehouse waiting to fly.

“All I need is a lucky break. If some influential person were to endorse the boo,k it would take off, I’m sure.”

It was about this time that I began to consider another reason why I had not become a best-selling author, apart from the ‘lucky break’ excuse. Maybe Pop-splat wasn’t such a great read after all, and the writer was a little short on talent?

Despite a great deal of help and encouragement from my daughter and son, who set up a website and Facebook page to promote the book, sales dwindled to zero, and I was obliged to admit defeat on the Pop-splat front. However, in the meantime, I had continued writing and completed a second novel, Kikaffir, in 2011.

“Have you heard of Smashwords?” my son asked me. “It’s an online publisher that sells ebooks. You provide them with your manuscript and they make it available on their platform, and take a small commission from every sale.”

I was through with mainstream publishers, so I agreed to give it a try. By this, I meant I would be grateful if he went ahead and did the necessary formatting, cover design and submission, which all entailed a considerable amount of skilled labour.

Over the following decade, I continued writing and he kept placing the results on Smashwords but I regret to report, our efforts were almost entirely in vain, for sales over the years amounted to hardly more than $100.

“Have you heard of Print On Demand publishing?”

Technology had moved along, and it was now possible to self-publish anything from five to a hundred, or more copies at a relatively low cost.

Again, I managed to wheedle a few thousand rand out of my long-suffering wife, and we had 20 copies each of Kikaffir, Shark Alley Shootout and Strandveld Private Investigators printed.

“It should be dead easy to sell them locally, and then the word will spread and I can have more printed.”

The Gansbaai Book Exchange sold half a dozen copies, while the Book Cottage in Hermanus eventually told me after two years to come and collect my books, as they had been unable to make a single sale. Somebody suggested I try the flea markets in Pearly Beach and Stanford. Three Pop-splats and two Shark Alley Shootouts. Pathetic!

“Well,” I said to my wife at the end of 2020, “it doesn’t look like I’ll be asking you for any more money to further my writing career.”

It was with that acknowledgement of failure that I concluded my final attempt to prove that arsehole headmaster wrong.

Towards the end of 1967, which was my last year at Fish Hoek High School, this pedagogic prick called my parents in for an interview. He told them it was his sad duty to inform them that their son would never amount to much in life. Because I was dull-witted and lacking in any God-given talent, my prospects were bleak. It would be futile to hope that I might avoid the usual disappointment, boredom and pain associated with a life of mediocrity.

Well, it turned out that he wasn’t far wrong in his assessment. What he didn’t get right, though,  was the boredom bit. I have always been, and remain so to this day, interested in everything under the sun. I find the natural world and the antics of humans endlessly fascinating, and I approach each day with fresh curiosity.

I now feel a certain degree of embarrassment that I should have deluded myself into believing I possessed enough talent to become a successful author. I also experience a strong sense of guilt when I consider how much time and effort, not to mention money, my wife and children have expended over the years in supporting me in my foolhardy literary ambitions. I can only hope that they do not harbour resentment or a sense of betrayal after realising they had allowed themselves to be persuaded to participate in such a misguided venture. My son, especially, has spent years trying to encourage me and promote my writing. Upon reflection, was it all for nothing? It is my hope that he will one day turn what he has learned from the experience into something of value and make it worthwhile.

Finally, although this signals the end of my writing career, it does not mean I will stop writing as a hobby. Hell, no! I intend to continue examining life and putting my thoughts into words. If I were to call a halt to this creative process, the consequences would be dire. In the words of Henry Fuckit, “I'll be destroyed, totally and utterly. My spinal column will dismantle itself and fall into pieces on the floor. My inflamed eyeballs will inflate and stand forth from my head before rupturing and collapsing back into their sockets. My liver will dissolve, my kidneys will vitrify, and my spleen will desiccate and crumble into dust. My poor heart will squawk and then shrivel to the size of a pea. My testicles will retract and putrefy with shame. My pride and joy will fall down dead, turn brown, then black, and hang between my legs, curing like a piece of biltong. My hair will turn white and fill my comb with tuft upon tuft. My tongue will thicken and become coated in lichen, choking my airway, blocking my gullet. My teeth will fall out with a clatter like ice into a bucket. My intestines will reverse the peristaltic flow, and excrement will ooze from my nostrils. And my brain! The reaction of my brain to the terrible insult of being made to give up writing will be truly cataclysmic. My brainstem, cerebellum and cerebrum will fuse together into a dense, lifeless mass like a golf ball. The process will be instantaneous and the resulting vacuum in the cranial cavity will suck in stirrups, anvils and hammers to strike my defunct brain and ricochet out through my tympanic membranes. My entire nervous system, central and peripheral, will burn out in a storm of electrochemical fireworks, and I will fall to the ground. Destroyed. Totally fucked in my moer."

Yes, that is what will happen if I stop writing, sure as night follows day.

To view my longer work as an author, you can find me on Smashwords here.

My Writing Career

Ian Martin

This is my writer's blog and it's a pleasure to have your company. You’ll see that the site is designed to showcase my writing.

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